commitment. Hendrix&Hunt1908 conclude that many people do not quit a toxic or dead relationship because they prefer an empty relationship to an empty house while deriving whichever scraps of fulfillment they can from outside the arrangement.
Clinical pastoral counselor H. Hendrix 1909 claims that -according to his experience- the number of relationships one has to go through in order to find a working one is -on average- nine (9). One can easily ponder the possible dire personal, legal and financial implications of such a state of affairs.
Couple therapist Perel claims that in our day marital infidelity proves to be a very inflammatory concept. Perhaps -the present writer adds- because it shows how the “love&fulfillment marriage� emperor has no clothes on.
While this same poll showed growing acceptance of divorce, premarital sex, and having babies out of wedlock, the 91 percent disapproval rate for cheating is nearly twice what it was 40 years ago, when similar surveys showed that only half of American adults believed that having an affair was always wrong. -...-The "capstone" model presumes -...- that you only should get married "after you've got your shit together." -...-The capstone model is much less forgiving of sexual betrayal because it presumes that those who finally get around to marrying should be mature enough to be both self-regulating and scrupulously honest. The increased unacceptability of adultery is linked to the rising age of first marriages. The evidence suggests, however, that the capstoners are more than a little naĂŻve if they imagine that a rich set of premarital life experiences will serve as an inoculation against infidelity. (Schwyzer 2013: no page).
1908 1909
2002:01. 2015.
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You’re reeling not only from the loss of the integrity of your relationship, but also from the loss of an illusion—that you’re special to your partner, and that the intimacy you thought you shared with that person would last forever. -...- But if you expect to be loved only for yourself, and feel cheap and compromised when you’re not, you have unrealistic expectations about what holds couples together. Even when you were courting, your partner was probably drawn not totally to you, but to an idealized portrait of you, and to your ability to enhance his or her self-image. -...-It may be painful to admit, but after the affair you both may prefer the package to each other.(Abrahms Spring1910&Spring 1996:10,93). The hallucinatory belief to have a 'rendezvous with destiny' playing a role in some warped Pygmalion story: how -in the example above- could the marriage between a monkey and a hen really end up like? Divorce/family court, police and counseling records are a staggering indictment of such flawed logic, but a definite boon to certain segments of society.
Professor of psychology Duana Welch 1911 confirms that “opposites attract” is just a myth. Research may substantiate the claim in initial stages, but the relationship then fizzles out over differences pretty quickly. A popular culture sensation, clinical pastoral counselor H. Hendrix 1912 claims 90% of relationships are in a stage where divorce, tuning out or bitter fighting is the norm. Society, however, has to encourage the marriage of hens and monkeys precisely in order to maximize the reproduction of its segments.
Those who have been emotionally abused in childhood are drawn to each other like moths to a flame. Each is bent on reinventing 1910
Clinical Psychologist and expert on issues of trust and fidelity. 2015. 1912 2012:part 1. Noted singer/actress Alanis Morissette referred to Hendrix as her mentor, and claimed his work helped shape her career and songs. 1911
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childhood relationships, either out of a desire to resolve them or simply because they are drawn to what is familiar. With both parties lacking in the ability to maintain a healthy relationship, these couplings are destined to be problematic. Most often we find that one partner takes on the role of the abuser while the other takes on the role of the victim, but even when no one plays the role of the abuser, dysfunctional responses by one or both partners can make the relationship extremely difficult.(Engel 2002:146). I even read a book that advised people to marry anyone who met half their standards! Never mind that advice like this is a divorce attorney’s dream, and runs against all the relationship science on compatibility.(Welch 2015b:30). Tallis agrees, proposing that evolution has hardwired us for psychopathological romantic obsessions that last “just long enough to ensure the survival of genes from one generation to the next.” -...-.flirtation and sex are metaphors for fascination (Hogshead 2010:25-26). If you have a strong need to affiliate, you might start to see people as friendlier and more approachable. -...-It seems as if being rejected activates the goal to affiliate, and that goal drives us to look for any opportunity to approach and bond with others. -...-Attributes that are easier to evaluate tend to be given more weight in decision making than attributes that are harder to evaluate—even when that means prioritizing objectively less important features over more important features.(Hamilton 2016:116-117,170,emphasis added). Nevertheless, clinical psychologist Welwood1913 rhapsodizes about the trial and tribulation aspect that constitutes the bulk of intimate relationships in terms of a “sacred combat” leading to spiritual evolution. He embroiders thereupon with a barrage of quotes from Sufi sages who yearn to be torn apart, pierced and impaled for true love's sake. Dating consultant Welch is adamant about how to get married quick:”The only way to do it is by leaving your man and seeing whether or
1913
2009.
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not he comes *crawling* back to get you .”1914. Dweck1915 also touts “the growth mindset”: embracing challenges instead of comfort in order to grow. Welch has a clear answer about whether the extensive bluffing 1916 and posturing she suggests constitutes manipulation: in the end, she says, “it's about winning” 1917.
Campbell seems to agree:”Marriage is not a love affair, it’s an ordeal. It is a religious exercise, a sacrament, the grace of participating in another life.”1918. M. Scott Peck rhapsodizes about a form of human and divine interplay that sees “god as a seducer”, and is framed within wild and frantic images of an endless sexual pursuit1919. Barely interested in closing one more final sale, Lakhani 1920 also urges marketers to “seduce” their prospective customers: bhakti never stops paying dividends.
Welwood's projection might be as inspiring as a training montage in one of those mimeographed action movies of the 1980s; police, divorce/family court, and counseling records are nevertheless a damning indictment of such bizarre logic that only endeavors to keep the societal machine running. Just as it is the case with anthills and beehives, society shall prevail no matter how many ants or bees perish in the process: the “living by other people's standards” from Nathaniel Branden, 1914
2015b:133. 2015. 1916 She (2016) for example suggests taking a slow, count-to-five, pause before accepting a financial offer. The gist here being, as Welch states repeatedly, not to sound desperate, but with many open options. Who's to say whether one is loved, appreciated, valued etc sufficiently at work, in a romantic relationship etc? One is. 1917 2016. 1918 1991:33. 1919 1993:part 08. 1920 2010:01. 1915
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which is a recipe for a self-esteem wreck.
J.B. Peterson might retort here that people ought to be grateful to society for supplying a structured environment: electricity, sewer, police and garbage collection services. The present writer retorts that ordinary citizens -not the many “protected categories� that ride the gravy train of public money- pay for that dearly. They not only foot the bills for the service, but fatten the many golden political calves who add percentages up in the usual nepotistic, vote-buying or mafioso scheme.
Should one be grateful because a mafioso puts a political minion in office so that the cost of garbage collection tax might double as flags proudly fly on and some sock-puppet bloviates forecasting mountains shall turn to polenta and oceans to lemonade soon enough if people put their nose to the grindstone and keep quiet a while longer?
Even the duality between those on the right or wrong side of the myth, good believers and bad disbelievers, evokes images of the mystical community of the faithful in mainstream religion, of the primeval horde in trance honoring the animal master. According to Janis,1921, group-think is characterized by:
1. Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking. 2. Rationalizing warnings that might challenge the group's assumptions. 3. Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore 1921
1971,1983.
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the consequences of their actions. 4. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, disfigured, impotent, or stupid. 5. Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of "disloyalty". 6. Self censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus. 7. Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement. 8. Mind guards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information. It isn't really different from most teenagers' leanings towards 'blending in', perhaps by wearing the 'right' shoes or listening to the 'right' music etc:”These consumers aren’t just consumers, they’re activists. Can you create ambassadors?”1922. In New Zealand, many proposed to rename the landscape to honor The Lord Of The
Rings movies; of course, some remarked that would make no sense as in twenty years nobody would probably remember what those weird names ever stood for.
Bauckham1923 argues that the beast berated in Revelation is no other than Nero. R.M. Price makes an interesting suggestion:
The written numeral 666 is not a reference to the Antichrist; by definition it is the Antichrist! If the Christ is the living word, that is, the spoken word, then the Antichrist is the opposite of the spoken word, namely the written sign per se. ( Deconstruction 2017:8). Koester1924 debunks the myth of the harlot Babylon riding a beast with seven heads, which would amount to a parody of a coin then depicting the goddess
Roma (personification of the city of Rome) sitting atop Rome's famous seven hills.
1922
Hogshead 2010:146. 1993:384ss. 1924 2011:The Harlot And Imperial Economy. 1923
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Koester again1925 suggests that the image of the heavenly city in Revelation is but a commonplace, metaphorical nod to what constituted the axis of citizenship and cultural identity in the Hellenistic world, or the city-state (polis).
Godly cities cropped up all over: “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. ” (Matthew 5:14). The present writer also adds “the city of Zeus”, a concept antedating St.Augustine and Revelation and attributed to Musonius as cosmopolitan fusion of sacred and mundane as a model for life. Mahayana Buddhism, too, features the image of the shining city as teaching detour (Mahayana); or the parable of the old city abandoned in the jungle (Hinayana). The concept didn't die with antiquity, but prospered through the various Città Del Sole (City Of The Sun Italian utopist Campanella wrote in 1602), down to Kennedy's (left-wing) and Reagan's (right-wing) “shining city up on a hill”: it never stops paying dividends.
The notion of the community of the faithful as “friends of god” is typically associated with Islam (Sufi masters or sheikhs are so dubbed), yet -already around 420 CE- Christian Bishop Palladius had written both The Lives Of The
Friends Of God, and – as he was apparently widely traveled- about asceticism in India.
It went further back in time. As Hellenistic Kings (323-30 BCE) styled themselves as “ god made manifest”, Mauryan Kings (321-185 BCE) in India called 1925
2011: New Creation And New Jerusalem.
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themselves devanampriya (friends of the gods 1926), much as Hellenistic chieftains termed themselves philos ton theon (friend of the gods).
Later, Plutarch (I/II
century CE) claimed -following Plato1927- that all good men were friends of the gods.
Hellenistic Kingdoms reached as far as India and Afghanistan. Greek -earlier as language and last as a script- was a lingua franca extending its reach from the eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan, the Persian gulf and North-Western India through commercial exchange networks lasting into the first centuries CE: well after the collapse of the Roman Empire as a unified political entity.
In the present writer's assessment, the above go beyond happenstance and mere trivia. They reflect the human psyche's circular obsession with hobnobbing with the almighty in one's chosen frame of reference (friends, sons, brothers, cousins... ):”The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” (Exodus 33:11). In Zoroastrianism, Zoroaster ( Yasna 46) pleads with the righteous god Ahura Mazda:”To thee I address my lament: attend Onto it, O Lord, And grant me the support which friend would give to friend.”. North-Korean Communist ruler Kim Jong-Il was officially dubbed “the dear leader”.
Krishna (almighty Vishnu's incarnation) is Arjuna's friend, counselor and charioteer. The Ramayana is also the story of the unshakable friendship between the monkey god Hanuman (the perfect devotee), and Rama (again Vishnu's incarnation). Gautama Buddha (Upaddha Sutta) reproaches his chief disciple 1926 1927
The Rig Veda recites:”May we protected by the Gods hereafter remain thy very prosperous friends, O Indra. ”. In the Theaetetus, Plato claims that understanding and virtue constitute likeness of god in man.
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Ananda over claiming that “admirable friendship” constitutes half of the noble life (necessary to attain nibbana or ultimate liberation). Buddha claims instead that “When a monk has admirable people as friends, companions, & comrades, he can be expected to develop & pursue the noble eightfold path. ”.
Over the internet, celebrities are seemingly one click away. To barely make the point, one might mention that the 'official' website of popular mythicist Jordan Maxwell has been for ages property -and under the control- of people other than Maxwell. Maxwell has been furthermore involved in ongoing litigation over the very use of the identity and character known as “Jordan Maxwell” (again, a pseudonym). Maxwell's opponents in court apparently claim ownership of the identity and character “Jordan Maxwell” arguing their position to be similar to that of DC COMICS: Maxwell would therefore be a copyrighted character like Superman is.
As well, the site of controversial proponent of “Actonite libertarianism and White liberation” Bryant is still active. The site explicitly invites to “send a letter” or “a donation to John”, although Bryant passed away in 2009. The website of popular Christ-myth theorist D.M. Murdock (pen name Acharya S) is still running and asking for donations to help her fight cancer in 2017 in spite of the fact that Murdock passed away in December 2015. Many sites in the Acharya S/ D.M Murdock galaxy omit her passing altogether: the “tomb” is empty. The practice is not limited to oddballs on the fringe. Most 'official websites' linked to celebrities are
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in reality operated by PR people; most people are unaware of that as they send emails and donations.
The chivalric Supremo Ordine Della Santissima Annunziata -established in the XIV century by the future royal house of Italy ( Casa Savoia)- in fact posited -beyond tax exemption and a series of honours- that recipients -chosen at the sole discretion of the house's head- would be officially considered cugini del Re (King's cousins), and allowed to address the King on a first-name basis ( dare del tu). Popular culture had appropriated this item, and Mussolini – prime minister and dictator- was said to be the King's brother.
This conversely reflects in the inveterate braggart's seriatim claims about his fabulous wealth, possessions, connections, and sex appeal. Other nitwits claim on obscure online pages to have been the paramour, best friend, classmate or associate of this or that minor celebrity 1928: they assisted supporting actress so-and-so on the set of that famous 1970s TV series...
The omnipresent media are taking grunt workers and rat race professionals for the ride of their life:
Most sitcoms ultimately serve as lifestyle advertising. They present alternate worlds full of intense friendships, interesting jobs, and razor-sharp cheekbones—often occurring in spacious, miraculously affordable housing. Last year, we took a look inside the interiors some of these famous sitcom characters live in to see how they 1928
The lie or misrepresentation is far more likely to go undetected if the celebrity is not under unrelenting media investigation. It is much easier to tell a lie about a supporting cast member on a forgotten TV series from the 1970s than to lie about the leading character in a blockbuster on screen all around the world right now.
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would match up with reality. (Berkowitz 2014:no page). The mere fact that something isn’t readily available can make people value it more and tell others to capitalize on the social currency of knowing about it or having it. (Berger 2013:34). Perfectionism never happens in a vacuum. It touches everyone around us. We pass it down to our children, we infect our workplace with impossible expectations, and it’s suffocating for our friends and families. (Brown 2010:48). President Nixon's lying about Watergate was no more sophisticated or different in kind from that of a four-year-old who lies to his or her mother about how the lamp happened to fall off the table and get broken. Insofar as the nature of the challenge is legitimate (and it usually is), lying is an attempt to circumvent legitimate suffering and hence is productive of mental illness. (Peck 1978:56, emphasis added). Most sit-com and TV show characters, however, would either never be able to afford their lifestyle, or they would go broke trying to finance it, an unspoken assumption in today's West.
This also reflects in the critique of other people's religion. One's religion is authentic, intimate and uplifting as it fosters communion with a compassionate deity; another's religion consists in mere rituals, folklore, vile praise devoted to remote, self-absorbed ghosts etc. This kind of reassuring double standards and improbable comedies of innocence do not concern only semi-literate hobos, or clueless masses brainwashed by propaganda.
Scholar Della Santina1929 said:
1929
ME6102 no date: Lotus Sutra part 3.
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You can be a awful person, a terrible person, you can commit endless crime, but before you die, if you get the right moment, not being too late and develop faith in Jesus then you go to heaven even if you have killed hundreds of people and are a awful person. So there are fundamental flaws in Christianity that is why I gave up Christianity when I was thirteen. It has some precious nuggets like love your neighbor and so forth, but it has so many defects. Della Santina forgets about various characters in the Buddhist lore, who used to be arch-transgressors - such as Angulimala, said to have killed 999 people; or courtesans Ambapali1930 and Utpalavarna-, later converted and became holy persons much in same the way Della Santina finds so awkward in Christianity.
To this day, Angulimala Paritta are sacred verses recited for the protection of expectant mothers. In the lore, Angulimala as a repented Buddhist monk -with Gautama Buddha's consent- healed a woman who was having childbirth problems. A transcendental Angulimala is also associated with his own Buddha-land.
In a Buddhist story, Mattakundali is the young son of a wealthy yet stingy miser. Abandoned to die alone when he's ill, Mattakundali (in this version) beholds the Buddha who's passing by; putting all his faith in the Buddha, he's reborn in heaven. As repeatedly stated in this writing, originality seems to play a lesser role than generally believed. It appears that the colossal deployment of means and greater or lesser talent are long-winded excuses to indulge in one's time's old, 1930
This female transgressor wished to offer the Buddha a meal. Gautama Buddha -contrary to public opinionaccepted her offer. She finally converted and became a saintly nun. The parallel with Jesus' encounter with female transgressors couldn't be more striking. Is one story true, or the other false? The present writer contends neither. Such stories -in all their local, culture-specific variants- only cater to the hollow cravings and circular proclivities of the human mind.
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circular monomania.
Since groupthink emerges from basic considerations about human psyche's fundamental blueprint, it is no surprise that both Hinayana Buddhism and Mormonism1931 -religions established more than twenty centuries apart in completely different circumstances and locales- request that their most committed members – Buddhist monks, Mormons on a missionary assignment- respect a long list of rules and taboos, including
1. early wake-up and bed calls (6h30/22h30 for Mormons).
2. No contact with the opposite sex in either social, romantic or otherwise ambiguous, unchaperoned situations.
3. No frivolous or idle pursuits. Buddhism emphasizes how inappropriate idle chatter and gossip are; it values silence, and keeping one's mind clean (Mormons) or focused (Buddhism). Mormons – and Buddhist monks- expressly extend the above to a series of rules covering modern day situations: no TV, radio, etc.
4. Emphasis on grooming and hygienic practices, yet disregard for vanity and personality issues.
5. Emphasis on the group (never being alone for Mormons on missionary
1931
Anecdotal evidence gathered from sparse LDS websites and publications.
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practice), and severe limits or bans placed on communications/interaction with outsiders.
6. Both Buddhist doctrine, and Mormon rules make ample allowances for situational constraints, such as abstaining from political activity, and/or criticism, respecting local customs, laws and beliefs etc. That's the “double truth” approach we find in both Origen1932 (185-254 CE, Christian theologian) and Buddhism (the difference between conventional and absolute truth 1933).
7. In some Theravada Buddhist countries, and in Mormonism, being a monk for a while (Buddhism), or going on a mission (typically 2 years for Mormon males) can act as rite of passage. Informal advice among both Thai Buddhists and Mormons suggests that males shall not start seeking a mate for the sacrament of marriage until after completing their religious duties (mission or a period of ordination). Tribal rituals1934 the world over see young males -at different ages and in different settings according to culture- going on retreats and/or undergoing ritual assignments that signpost their transition into adulthood.
At some point Vandiver criticizes Campbell's approach by first labeling it 1932
For example, some propositions may be philosophically correct, but theologically (=ultimate truth) incorrect. For example, some teachings may be interpreted as misogynistic to court favors with popular consensus at the time, whereas the “ultimate truth” recognizes that both males and females are alike (emptiness, Buddha-nature etc). The person one perceives as a tartuffe with a dishonest heart may be an enlightened being who “plays” with popular piety and conventional truth in order to get “ultimate truth” across; or s-he may just be a despicable tartuffe tout court. Robert Thurman claims that Gautama Buddha's first teachings were imparted in such a way to capture the interest of “male chauvinists” among Hindus of high caste tired of empty Vedic rituals and ceremony. That's clearly “a Rorschach test of ever changing sensibilities”. 1934 It isn't difficult to recognize here the hero's journey, the labor motif and other well-known mythemes (=building block of myth). 1933
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as a mere series of examples and then by dismissing the strategy entirely, as lists of examples in no way demonstrate the point, for example psychic unity of mankind. Her objection is not tenable: it is not possible to use electronic microscopes or DNA testing to prove anything about say the idea of the dying/rising savior, the journeying founder etc. Besides, the recourse to technology in no way shelters from hoaxes and inconclusiveness.
The Y2K bug that was supposed to bring us back to the stone age frying every computer's CPU (all computers down to the last one in all possible universes); or the Mexican flu, Chinese flu, avian flu, mad cow disease etc that ought to have obliterated nine sevenths of the human race in a matter of weeks did in fact -so the story went- find support from findings at the electronic microscope, culture dish etc. Finally, even courts of law use a series of often unrelated proofs and evidence -statements, camera footage, DNA, fingerprints, daily schedules- to convict people all over the world.
Discourse is the only tool at our disposal to make sense of whatever remains we get (monuments, events, writings, rites...). The plural of anecdote is indeed not data, yet discourse can basically be(come) whatever we want it to be. Some scholars defend -on the basis of both literary and archaeological evidence- the thesis that Nero engaged in important building activities in his first five years; others flatly deny it saying Nero didn't build much during that time.
Onto another example, discussing a book on WWII by an historian 1515
( professor N.Davies ), The Sunday Times wrote on November 5, 2006 “In reality, in the first 22 months of fighting when the Wehrmacht attacked and occupied eight countries, the Red Army attacked and occupied five. ”1935. Inversely, professor of English and Holocaust Studies B. Blackwell wrote in 2005:”Hitler crossed every border around Germany. Stalin did not. -...- American foreign policy since Roosevelt explains why we stormed the beaches of Normandy and Omaha, but never raised a finger to Stalin.”1936.
When news reached the Czar that his fleet had been wiped out (Battle of Tsushima) during a war with Japan in 1905, alternative accounts exist:
•
Nicholas would have ignored the news playing tennis heedlessly.
•
He would have shivered in angst, while the Empress cried (as Olga, Nicholas' daughter, related).
It isn't rare to see equally credentialed specialists champion opposite theses in unambiguous, direct terms. After all, they know “the facts” as they examined cablegrams, clay tablets, warehouse lists etc. The “authentication” works as it does in urban legend, such as a 1935 version of “the vanishing hitchhiker”, who saves a driver's life then disappears
but she had left a book on the seat. The next day he went to return the book. He found her father, an English professor, at home. He 1935 1936
How We Didn't... 2006:no page. 2005:9,13.
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said that the girl was his daughter, that she had been killed in an auto accident at the same corner one or two years ago that very day. But since the fellow had the book, the father took it into the library, to look on the shelves for it—he found the place where it should have been vacant. (Brunvand 1981:23). Quite often, specialists are promoted or demoted according to the axes they grind, much as Hegel -one of the capstone philosophers of the West- was in high favor in Prussia because his philosophical approach squared with the sociopolitical climate of his time (=Hegel as antidote against student radicalism):
That is exactly what the essence of historical remembrance boils down to: identification and psychological proximity, rather than historical accuracy let alone political depth. The question of whether historical remembrance is constructed, imagined, manufactured out of whole cloth or willed is, quite correctly, of profound importance to professional historians but, as the best of them realise full well, it is also beside the point. Nationalism is an emotion but the love in question is self-love. -...-But remembrance is about self-love, and selfrecognition, or it is about nothing. -...- Remembrance in its paradigmatic form is permanently adolescent, and proceeds as if gravitationally drawn to suffering, conflict and sacrifice.(Rieff 2011:19,97,101). The Hero is, in fact. only an advanced form of Boy psychology-the most advanced form-...- the best in the adolescent stage of development.-...-The Hero's downfall is that he doesn't know and is unable to acknowledge his own limitations. -...- Denial of death-the ultimate limitation on human life-is his specialty. (Moore&Gillette 1990:37-39). le istanze di comprensione entro la mentalitĂ vi sono riportate dall'appartenenza psicologica del ricevente al gruppo sociale all'individualitĂ del messaggio. (Instances of understanding within a given mentality are made possible through psychological allegiance the individual pays to the social group, thus rendering the message in individual terms) (Zorzetti 1980-1:149, free translation).
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MAKE IT AS YOU GO ALONG
When a real person/event does not exist, on which to focus the mythmaking, spurious alternatives can be manufactured for the purpose of political intrigue: what virtue is there in telling made-up stories rather than true ones? Let's read some opinions first.
They all roared out in a mighty laugh, and I told some other anecdotes, equally amusing to them, and believing I had them in a first-rate way, I quit and got down, thanking the people for their attention. But I took care to remark that I was as dry as a powder horn, and that I thought it was time for us all to wet our whistles a little; and so I put off to the liquor stand, and was followed by the greater part of the crowd. (David Crockett 1834:no page). The myth -...- has outlived the thoughts of all its defenders and of all its adversaries. It is the myth that gives life. -...- Now as myth transcends thought, incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the dying god, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens-at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris , dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. (Lewis 1970:40-42) One idea is that of the messiah, the homo novus, that obsessed the ancient world. Another popular prophecy after WWI announced the rise of a 'German messiah' of unspecified background; this was just another edition of the ever-present longing for a leader that will lead the faithful out of the present predicament, whether it be the dire years after WWI, the heavy taxes that burdened the medieval peasant, etc: 1518
I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. (Deuteronomy 18:18). The various 'national unity' governments of our day supposedly coalescing to counter the financial, industrial meltdown and decommissioning decades of policy making triggered make ample recourse to both that theme and the primeval unity theme. Heraclitus (VI-V century BCE) proposes enantiodromia, or a sort of confluence of opposites. For Sade, literary aventures (adventures) consist in the unusual interaction on paper between diverse and opposed characters (caractères): the merry men motif.
Robert Thurman posits progress on the way to Mahayana Buddhist enlightenment as requiring an “encounter” (with a sacred text, a teacher etc). R.L. Moore1937 explains that in order to kill “the dragon of grandiosity” through mythological ideation, one needs “religion based on inter-tribal cooperation”. Jesus, Romulus, Buddha, Joseph Smith, Mohamed...all with a diverse retinue of merry men.
The same minestrone1938 of caractères recalls not only XVIII century
romanesque literature, but the zenith and nadir of contemporary TV or theater productions. For example, Miracle Detectives (2011) is a show that presents some sort of eerie X-Files (1993-2002) kind of atmosphere to introduce a female scientist and a male religionist (=the caractères) examining purportedly mysterious events to 1937 1938
No date-3:part 10. Italian soup made from pasta, and a variety of vegetables.
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reach a verdict regarding the supernatural nature of the same. For all it matters, even Afrocentric comedy series The Jeffersons (1975-85) relies on a string of opposing caractères.
Popular culture follows suit with the slew of Black&White; cop&crook; German&Jew buddy movies. Viewers delight not only in mainline U.S productions, but in a chain of swinish regional copycats such as 2011 Irish The Guard, a Black versus White buddy cop movie, which offers the complimentary clash between U.S and Irish slang.
Boondoggle affairs among cliques of opposing politicians piled up in 'national unity' governments as they divide the public spoils receive their management lettres de noblesse as “a team of rivals”1939: a man of destiny, Abraham Lincoln summons politicians from left and right to fight his 'just war'.
According to Reuters (November 13, 2012), French President Hollande exhorted the French to “Nous devons faire nation, c'est-à-dire faire bloc dans un moment particulier ” (we shall behave as a nation, that's to say to come together as one at this particular point in time).
In many cases the messiah would represent a return or reincarnation of a traditional hero (King Arthur, the Emperor Redbeard, Charlemagne, Marko King of Serbia...) considered to be meta-historically “asleep” in some sacred place 1940 but 1939 1940
Roberto 2011:Building And Leading Teams. Lecuppre 2003.
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ready to help his kin in times of high distress.
This concept was generously applied to the fallen heroes of WWI as well1941:
the sense of place was a fairly late development in the history of prose fiction. As Mikhail Bakhtin observed, the cities of classical romance are interchangeable backcloths for the plot: Ephesus might as well be Corynth or Syracuse, for all we are told about them. (Lodge 1992:57). In other cases, the returning messiah is a religious founder: Jesus or a deified Lao-Tzu (after a judgment day of fire and flood according to some Taoist sects): the 12th Imam shall come back from exile to restore true Islam. The seven (Christian) sleepers (from the Golden Legend) retreat and sleep in a cave on mount Celion for 196 years.
Ambiguities subsist regarding the mythological return of heroes, founders and saviors. A Buddhist Zen koan recites:”If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha; if you meet a patriarch, kill the patriarch”. Dostoevsky in The Brothers
Karamazov (1879-80) presents The Grand Inquisitor. Jesus comes back to Spain in the time of the Inquisition, preaches and performs miracles. The Inquisition arrests and questions him. At the end of the interview, an old inquisitor dismisses Jesus on the condition he shall never return; Jesus disappears in the dark alleys of Seville.
1941
“The resource of medieval funerary statuary was mobilized with recumbent figures of soldiers to visualize the ‘sleeping dead’. In 1916, the art gallery of Mannheim in Baden organized a well-received exhibition about war graves and war memorials that afterwards toured Germany -...-. Consider Munich’s ‘sleeping warrior’ unveiled in December 1924. In harmony with the inscription, ‘THEY SHALL RISE AGAIN’, the speaker of the Bavarian Veterans’ Association pictured the imminence of national regeneration” (Goebel 2004:488-92).
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Mountains are the abode of a Melanesian modern savior-hero, too:”a god called John Frum -...- lived in a local volcano and he would bring cargo to the native peoples”1942. That's not limited to an eurocentric, Graeco-roman, or Judaeo-christian perspective. Mahakassapa, one of Gautama Buddha's greatest disciples -the founder of far-eastern Buddhism1943, and Buddha's unofficial successor1944-, is said to rest under the mountain at Gurpa; one day he'll symbolically surrender robe, bowl, and heritage to Maitreya, the celestial Buddha of the future 1945. Kukai, founder of Japanese Shingon Buddhism, is also said to have entered eternal bliss at mount Koya as he waits for the next Buddha to appear. Russian monarchs considered themselves -through dynastic alliance- the heirs of the defunct Byzantine -hence Romantradition.
The arahat1946 Pindola -according to legend - abused his supernatural powers in a trivial manner; Gautama Buddha was displeased, and barred Pindola from entering nirvana1947. Pindola therefore remained in the world to spread Buddhism, surfacing at great events such as the III Buddhist council under Asoka. The XIII century Christian legend of the Wandering Jew sees a Jew who taunts Jesus 1942
Wotton 2007:1. Mahakassapa apparently was the only one to understand Gautama Buddha's silent flower sermon, for which Buddha chose him as recipient of direct transmission of wisdom. On slightly different terms, the same happens between Jesus and Judas in the apocryphal gospel. 1944 Mahakassapa apparently didn't lack self-esteem. The Theragatha records him as proclaiming: “In the whole field of the Buddha's following, Except for the mighty Master himself, I stand the foremost in ascetic ways; No one practices them so far as I”. 1945 The same is relayed about Kukai (VIII/IX century), founder of Japanese Shingon Buddhism, buried at mount Koya. 1946 arahat (=estinguished one): A person of superior spiritual accomplishment -though lower than that of a Buddha- and free from the cycle of rebirth. 1947 Of course, countless stories exist relating Gautama Buddha's own prodigies and miracles, often performed in front of crowds as Pindola had done. 1943
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on the way to his crucifixion. Jesus curses him to wander the earth until the Messiah's second coming.
Religious Taoism makes of immortality the supreme goal; immortal beings of three ascending groups are said to exist. Hindu Prabhakara Siddha Yogi is rumored to have lived 723 years. No or little difference exist between this tradition, and the lore of the allegedly immortal count of Saint-Germain 1948, or Lambert's 1986 Highlander: the human mind just loves the item. 1991 Highlander II sees the same character -originally an art dealer- as a scientist behind an outer space shield to counter the ozone layer's depletion that threatens the Earth: the more fads (of the day) filmmakers can fit into their formula movies, the better.
Also, the extent to which you can leverage, combine, or attach to existing beliefs, fears, anxieties, and facts will determine how overtly or covertly persuasive you need to be. -...-first examine who will most easily accept the new information, whose paradigm the narrative best fits. They then create a powerful story and present it to the audience. They give them just enough evidence in the beginning that the people who want to believe the information will. -...-Ideas are spread when they are charged with emotion or meaning. They spread fastest when they are controversial, when they cast stones at our enemies, when they are motivational, when they promise salvation, or when they relieve a pressing pain that someone or a group is experiencing. (Lakhani 2008:3-4). The motif lives on in our day when this or that unspeakable war criminal, movie or rock star officially declared dead is 'spotted' in some obscure
1948
Rakoczy is often dubbed Saint Germain in theosophical circles. Rakoczy is apparently no other than Francis Bacon deified (1561-1626). The British aristocrat, statesman and philosopher -interestingly enough- ended in disgrace his seemingly irresistible public ascent under royal patronage: a Parliamentary committee charged him with 23 separate counts of corruption. Bacon acknowledged his misconduct, but clarified he had never allowed gifts to influence his judgement.
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place (or several at the same time); or when Dune's fictional messiah is 'the sleeper who has awakened'1949; the reverse also unfolds - albeit less frequently- when this or that public personality is rumored to have died, being thus replaced by a substitute.
Chilean diplomat, Fascist enthusiast and dabbler in esoteric matters Miguel Serrano (1917-2009) extends the imagery to Adolf Hitler he considers a demigod; the accursed arch-dictator would be – so believes Serrano- metahistorically asleep in Antarctica biding his time to return1950:
That means a new/old religion, with all of its rituals and myths which are necessary to discover or rediscover. Its central Drama is the aparition is the aparition on this earth of the Person of Adolf Hitler, the last Avatara who came to produce this enormous storm or catastrophe in order to awake all those who are asleep and to open the New Age which will come after the Deluge. That is the reason why we have started to count the beginning of the New Age after the birth of Hitler. We are in the year 105. -...- the secret roots of Hitlerism and "who" Adolf Hitler really was: a magician who had the power to come voluntarily out of his body and communicate with other unbodily beings.[sic] (Serrano 1995: no page). The primary polarity of Gnostic psychology is not sin and redemption, but ignorance and gnosis, forgetting and memory, sleep and the awakening of knowledge. (Davis 1999:94). In ancient times, too, they passed from glory ( kleos) to ktema1951, or the 1949
“And they were hearing a voice from the heavens saying, 'Have you made proclamation to the fallenasleep?'And an obeisance was heard from the cross, 'Yes.' ” ( Gospel Of Peter, I/II century CE, verse 41-42, R. Brown trans.). “Asleep” here also means “dead”: Jesus brought his message to the deceased, just as Gautama Buddha did when he preached to his deceased mother in heaven. 1950 Much as Jesus appears to have historically failed as a messiah because he was scourged and killed after all, so does Hitler, who also flopped miserably. Both will have the last laugh, though, as they shall one day return in glory to pass ultimate judgment on those who judged them. The distraught aficionados who had in turn been persecuted, jeered and ridiculed will also triumph as their 'great man' finally takes charge vindicating a manifest destiny the nincompoop never stopped believing in. 1951 Several translation for the word/concept have been suggested in research. In Thucydides, ktema es aiei means acquisition (possession...) for all time (an eon): a monument? The utility of what is being narrated as evergreen (=perennial wisdom). In Thucydides again, ktema is put in relation with anathema, a sort of memorial.
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past transmitted in the fixed form of a yardstick to assess our present (and thus future):”the future as the unfolding of expectations the present time vouchsafes” 1952. The mythologized more or less recent past becomes instrumental in the hands of orators, politicians and their ilk in a sort of Orwellian paradox (controlling the past is controlling the present, thus the future)1953, while sinking into the achronotopos.
In fact, while the mythologized past boasts real-life existence (it happened under Pontius Pilate; during WWI; when my grandfather was a kid; during the reign of Amenophis III, etc ), it rapidly slips into a misty dimension, whose time and space become less and less clear (“when the Earth was young...”), and thus unimportant (achronotopos, without time and space):”The function of apologetics, not a prop for it.”
date is itself a
1954
.
At the same time, the entranced followers led by the high priests of permissible discourse experience never-ending re-editions (=recapture motif) of the founding moments (=duration), quintessential ordeals and core values the regime of the day happens to endorse.
And the one sitting on the throne said, "Look, I am making everything new!" And then he said to me, "Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true." (Revelation 21:5). Journalists couldn’t find reports of any events that matched the improbable plot of [the movie billed as a “true story”] Fargo, and the Coen brothers eventually owned up to the fact that the movie was all fiction. Their explanation for why they sought to dupe their 1952
Vieira Ferreira 2009:78. Hartog 1997. 1954 Price 2010b:36. 1953
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viewers, though, is telling. “We felt the audience would have certain expectations if they were told it was a true story that would allow us to do things that we wouldn’t be allowed to do if they thought it was fiction,” Joel Coen, Fargo’s director, explained. Audience members, then, according to Joel Coen, assess material differently if they believe it is factual. They accept greater stretches of logic and more implausible plot developments, he suggests, than they would from “pure” fiction. This gives those creating the material greater latitude in what they produce.(Feldman 2009:92). the only thing true about it is that it’s a story (Joel Coen in 2015, hoaxing director of the fictional blockbusting movie Fargo presented as a “true story”). When political intrigue and the mood of the times command it, myth may also become fact; when all else fails, messiahs can be purposefully 'manufactured'1955 as tools of political intrigue:”la résurrection, sous cette forme, de princes absents ou trépassés, érige la nostalgie en acteur de la scène politique”1956 (the resurrection under this guise of absent or deceased princes sets longing as center-stage political actor).
A local Catholic Church publication these days invites to pray this Catholic clergyman having already attained pseudo-sanctity as victim of Fascist repression: at least one miracle due to his intercession is needed in order to support his beatification.
It isn't an unwarranted leap to hypothesize that -after several decades of stillness- the elusive miracle(s) could happen to some mythomaniac taking a morbid interest in the plea. Controversial Tibetan Buddhist teacher M. Roach is, as 1955
Prominent contemporary philosopher Krishnamurti was by all accounts the 'manufactured messiah' of the theosophical society. 1956 Lecuppre 2008:50.
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bewildered (ex)votaries assure, capable of walking through walls.
Providential witnesses are often all it takes:�I wish I could prove Homer to have been an eye witness of the Troyan War � declared a chagrined Schliemann in 1881:
Were there no other reason whatever, we should still be obliged to reject the stories of miracles recorded of the Buddha, simply because not a single one of these stories can be shown to rest upon the testimony of an eyewitness, or even of a contemporary of the Buddha. But when we have, on the contrary, as Renan assures us, a record - as, e.g., in the case of Matthew's Gospel - proven to have come in substantially its present form from a personal companion and intimate friend of Jesus, then it should be clear as light to any ordinary mind that the case is totally different. And thus, to argue that because one rejects the stories of the miracles of Buddha, he should in consistency reject also the testimony of the apostles to the miracles of Jesus, is only to display one's ignorance and folly (Kellogg 1885:54-5). The horde in fusion routinely invokes military heroes across cultures: either a lone voice in the crowd (for example NSDAP ceremonies), or the pack as one shall answer when the fallen hero's name is uttered.
Miracles abound over the internet. Con-people are busier than ever taking pencil-necked sweat-hogs -in their eagerness to believe improbable mythological bunkum- for a ride:
Belle Gibson's empire was crumbling before her eyes. Weeks before her book, "The Whole Pantry," was set to be published in Britain and the United States, an Australian newspaper began chipping away at Gibson's claims that she had been given only months to live after she was diagnosed with an incurable form of brain cancer 1527
in 2009. -...- The fantastical story seemed too good to be true. And, it turns out, it wasn't true at all. -...-"None of it's true," she told the Australian Women's Weekly in her first comments acknowledging that she had duped the world with an elaborate hoax. -...-She [also] claimed to have died during a medical procedure -- and then emerged from a post-operative coma. -...-Believe it or not, the improbability of all of these stories might have gone unnoticed, and Gibson might have quietly joined the growing ranks of "holistic" healing evangelizers, had it not been for the diligence of the Australian, which first exposed some of the massive holes in Gibson's story in a March investigation. -...-Earlier in the month, charities for which Gibson claimed to have raised money told the Sydney Morning Herald that they never saw any of it. -...-Gibson rose to fame knowing that her ardent followers, some with large megaphones, would be willing to ignore the medical improbability of her story in favor of the hope she represented. (Phillip 2015:no page, emphasis added). Longing can also pivot around the actual heirs to non-existent -or mythical- figures such as the recent cult of John Frum in Melanesia since the 1930s, and John Frum's sons rumored to have landed at some point or another during WWII. John Frum -as this writing reiterates- also played the usual part of the prophet of doom, for he predicted WWII. Popular culture follows suit: Il Figlio Di
Zorro (1974, Zorro's son); Il Figlio Di D'Artagnan (1950); Il Figlio Di Sandokan (1998); Son Of Dracula (1943); Children Of Dune (2003)...
The unholy alliance between more or less mentally unstable fringe characters and the Barnums of high politics is quite common:
I come to this essay not as an expert in literature but as a psychologist who was initially interested in the use of writing as a way to affect people's health. Through a series of experiments, my colleagues and I discovered that when people put their emotional upheavals into words, their physical and mental health improved markedly. Further, the act of constructing stories appeared to be a natural human process 1528
that helped individuals understand their experiences and themselves. (Pennebacker 2000:3). On the face of it, therapeutic culture is a reaction against a stultifying technical and bureaucratic disenchantment. Because of its stress on individual uniqueness, pleasure, and introspection, therapeutic culture is, at face value, a vast cultural effort to recapture meaning and feeling in an otherwise barren and technical world of meanings. -...-In taking a reflexive posture toward emotions essential to selfhood, and in positing a model of disengaged mastery over one’s emotions, therapeutic culture has paradoxically contributed to a splitting of emotions and action. By insisting that the rules governing the expression of emotions are to be learned reflexively, the therapeutic discourse has made emotional life a matter of procedural and reflexive monitoring of the self -...-. therapeutic culture is an informal and almost inchoate aspect of our social experience, yet it is also a deeply internalized cultural schema organizing perception of self and others, autobiography, and interpersonal interaction (Illouz 2008:149-50,156). therapy and theory are always so closely linked (Rieff 2006:147). As a move against culture and tradition this 'seeing the pearl as the disease of the oyster' could hardly be equalled. It may not be going too far to see in today's popular advertising and media culture, of stereotyped yet powerfully manipulative images, the full flowering of just such a conviction. What was 'once only imagin'd' now bares its tits for real, shooting to kill from every surface. Today it is the outer images which are dangerously pathological under their surfaces, yet essentially worthless in themselves; cheap simulations masquerading as 'the real thing' and systematically delivering their victims over to the psychic pimps. The images of the inner world, denied the 'living powers' of tradition, become mere reflections of pathology, a 'heap of broken images' from the Waste Land all around (Angelo 1992:71-2). To live a meaningful life, we must have a self-generated purpose that possesses personal significance rather than one that is dictated by society’s standards and expectations. When we do experience this sense of purpose, we often feel as though we have found our calling. -...-The important thing is that we choose our purpose in accordance with our own values and passions rather than conforming to others’ expectations. (Ben-Shahar 2007:39). The modern reader may find these stories implausible and even 1529
grotesque; it's compulsory to emphasize, however, how they represent a snapshot of political dynamics at their times' highest levels. Runciman tells of Giovanni di Cocleria, who in 1261 claimed to be Frederick II risen from the dead 1957 in the greater scheme of the confrontation in Sicily between the Pope and the Normans; “Perkin Warbeck, fils présumé d'Edouard IV, en réalité natif de Tournai et issu du milieu marchand, aurait échappé à la mort en se réfugiant sur le continent”1958.
Lecuppre recounts of Giannino Baglione, a wealthy merchant from Siena, who was overtaken by the spurious character scheming politicians imposed upon him; a reappearing margrave follows, who was initially endorsed by powerful royalties, yet after his demise identified as a miller:
Son existence et sa raison basculent lorsque le sénateur de Rome, Cola di Rienzo, parvient en 1354 à lui faire croire qu'il n'est autre que Jean 1er le Postume, fils du roi de France Louis X, échangé dans sa prime enfance contre le fils, assassiné à sa place, de la nourrice Marie. -...- la démarche de Giannino résulte d'une lecture paranoïaque de l'Histoire: il rapporte tout à lui, manifeste une crédulité excessive envers ses partisans potentiels et se fait donc fréquemment manipuler, sans qu'il soit toujours facile de deviner par qui. Des zones d'ombre demeurent, où le fabuleux affleure. Une certitude surnage: la conviction qui l'anime d'être de naissance royale. Sur elle viennent se greffer des images de la royauté émises par d'autres, mais qu'il incorpore harmonieusement dans sa vision naïve des hiérarchies de ce monde. (2005:103-105). Lasché par Charles IV [roi des Romains], vaincu sur le terrain, le pseudo-Valdemar [margrave de Magdebourg], demeuré entre les mains de ses alliés d’Anhalt, décède en 1356. Plus tard, on dira qu’il était meunier et se nommait Meinecke ou Jekel Rehbock. L’implication personnelle d’un roi dans le complot prouve, s’il en était 1957 1958
1958:56. “Perkin Warbeck, presumed son of Edward VI – in reality a native of Tournai with a mercantile backgroundwould avoid death by taking refuge on the continent “ Lecuppre 2002:531.
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besoin, à quel point la conjuration fondée sur la substitution d’identité est devenue un instrument presque classique dans le jeu politique allemand. (2008:53). Giannino is only one of a string of hypothetical royalties, mystics and messiahs meeting an horrendous fate, and whose life seems cut from ancient narratives (for example the godly/royal newborn raised by foster parents, akin to Sargon, Sweet Medicine (American-Indian), Oedipus, Romulus, Mwindo, Moses, Karna -son of Sun god Surya- etc etc).
Russia in the XVII and XVIII century saw dozens of pretenders at work. Several people claimed to be King Louis XVI's son -deceased in captivity in 1795-. When the monarchy was reestablished in France in 1814-5, several people from all over came forward as the heir royalists had miraculously spirited away. The entire situation looked like an Abbott&Costello comedy moment: a Canadian preacher of American-Indian heritage, and a German watch- and weapon-maker were among the many candidates.
German watch- and weapon-maker Naundorff enjoyed widespread popularity: he was accepted by people close to Louis XVI as Louis' son; he is also buried with an epitaph recognizing him as prince, although disputed DNA evidence seems to disqualify him. Naundorff's descendants have also tried their luck pressing for judicial recognition in French courts.
In the XX century, an entire chapter of popular culture was written around the presumed survival of one of Czar Nicholas' daughters (either Anastasia 1531
according to most, or Maria according to some). While forensic science in recent years (DNA tests, recovering of remains etc) seems to show no member of the Russian Imperial family survived, many impostors, impersonators and con-people profited from one of the century's most enthralling spy stories.
Real monarchs such as Edward II can in effect meet their doppelgaenger claiming to be the legitimate King:
Significativement, la fin de notre période accorde une préférence à des fables d'apparence plus laïque ou folklorique évoquant des échanges de nourrissons ou des enfants épargnés par la main du bourreau. John de Powderham, en 1318, explique sans sourciller devant Edouard II d'Angleterre, objet de toutes les contestations, qu'il est, lui, le véritable Edouard, et que l'homme qui occupe le trône est un fils de charretier autrefois mis à sa place dans le royal berceau (Lecuppre 2002:531). Contemporary conspiracy theories may require the world's royalties, celebrities and wheelers-dealers to be -in one instance- replicants, zombies or lookalikes (the modern equivalent of the swapping of infants) fostered by outer space cabals that thus run the world by proxy.
The “swapping of infants” item gives also rise to “the prince and the poor” narratives that underscore the travesty and happenstance of birth. In his 1795 masterpiece Aline Et Valcour, Sade sees the confrontation between a wicked, libertine high magistrate, a powerful and wealthy man, and an impoverished but upright nobleman: “you should know that with a hundred bags containing a thousand francs each, my footman can be your equal at any moment” 1959 quips the 1959
“Songez qu'avec cent sacs de mille francs, mon valet demain peut etre votre égal”. Noblesse de robe's offices
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nobleman.
This theme recurs in all sorts of guises. For example, Hitler might not have died in Berlin: he fled abroad, and was replaced by an impersonator, of which there were many as it was the case with Saddam Hussein. Paranoid dictators -such as Saddam Hussein and Hitler- purportedly recurred to stand-ins: the ubiquity of the gods.
An entire industry of impersonators and stand-ins exists: people who impersonate fictional Ace Ventura at Disneyland; TV clones of celebrities; Hollywood stand-ins. Once again, what the human mind loves so much exactly matches the symptoms of a serious mental illness: the Capgras syndrome (documented in 1923), where one is convinced one's near and dear have been replaced by clones.
Giannino's presumed royal birth was all the more prestigious because rumor had it that the first French Kings descended from no other than the holy Grail, or the biblical redeemed prostitute Magdalene 1960 having reached southern France pregnant of Jesus. That was why Popes never objected to the French King being anointed with the holy oil1961.
While such story will undoubtedly raise a few eyebrows, suffice it to say were venal, that is the State sold them to commoners to raise money. Commoners became thus part of robe, nobility that mostly served the crown in the financial or judicial branches of the public administration. 1960 There is confusion around who Magdalene really is. Some contend her character gets mixed up with other New Testament figures. 1961 Such was apparently also the case of Visigothic Kings in Spain before the Muslim conquest (VIII century).
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that southern France is to this day the Eldorado of mythers, treasure seekers and new-agers uninhibited writers chronicle, for some even contend various treasures (the Solomon temple's, the Nibelungen's...) hide there.
The supernatural bloodline/mythical treasure mania resurfaces at regular interval: swindling pen-men laugh all the way to the bank as their forged bunkum makes it to the best selling list. Frazzled gawkers can buy Da Vinci Code or Harry
Potter books not knowing whether it's a made-up story that looks real, or whether it's a real story that sounds made-up: both are so 'emotionally true' to the reader it just makes no difference.
If -as Lecuppre explains- the game of identity substitution remained so popular for centuries across cultures (from England to Italy and Russia) as tool of high political intrigue, one can only recall the definition early psychoanalysts gave:
Accidental occurrences of this kind arouse the child's envy, and this finds its expression in fancy fabrics which replace the two parents by others of a higher rank.extnote -...- It is likewise a factor whether these fancies are elaborated with more or less claim to plausibility-...-.The projection mechanism--which also bore its part in the reinterpretation of the birth act, as well as certain other characteristics of myth formation, to be discussed presently-necessitates the uniform characterization of the myth as a paranoid structure, in view of its resemblance to peculiar processes in the mechanism of certain psychic disturbances. Intimately connected with the paranoid character is the property of separating or dissociating what is fused in the imagination. (Rank 1914:69-70). extnote
This is a variation upon the theme of the recapture discussed elsewhere. The press often covers the case of this, that or another person going on a wild chase after biological relatives ( children/parents) they have never met; or of close relatives (parents-children, siblings etc) oscillating between closeness and estrangement (note of this writer).
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I once had to perform a risk assessment on a prisoner who believed that his father was a famous Hollywood actor. “Michael,” as I will call him, had developed this belief about his parental lineage and had in fact driven long distances from his home in Canada to Los Angeles to see his famous father. He had broken into a house he believed to be owned by the actor and started living there. After he was arrested, he continued to believe, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that his father was the famous actor. Michael’s real father used to visit him in prison; Michael thought of him more as a friend than a father. Michael’s delusion lasted his entire adult life. I met Michael some twenty years after his third break-in of the Hollywood actor’s home. The third crime had triggered special provisions in Canada that placed Michael in the “dangerous offender” category, and he had received a long prison sentence (Kiehl 2014:169-70). In fact, Hippolytus the bastard is the mirror image of Theseus, the man with two fathers (Mitchell 1991:109). When the film E.T. became a rip-roaring success, many of us marveled at the fact that a homely little extraterrestrial could win so many hearts. But our archetypal analysis identified a pattern of story elements that had been recurring in stories throughout the ages: the "Tale of the Foundling," a Caregiver story for children. In this tale, a small person, usually a child, starts out feeling dislocated and lonely, but then discovers a creature even more vulnerable than he. The child immediately becomes the protector. (Mark&Pearson 2001:287). Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of vocabularies of reason and coercion.(Campbell 1968:4). Lafaye relates how messiahs were endemic in the Iberic world (the present writer adds Brazil, Mexico...), and that the Portuguese monarchy could as well claim divine affiliations. The newly established kingdom of Aragon was also under the supposed protection of the Christian Holy Grail, which King Martin the Humane installed at Zaragoza in 1399 1962. Da Vinci Code balderdash was in fact 1962
An entire Iberian tradition developed around the Christian Holy Grail. King Martin's Grail was said to be a “Calzer de piedra” (stone chalice). In 1437, the King of Aragon bequeathed the Grail to the cathedral at Valencia, where it remained until 1914, when it was transferred to the Chapel Of The Holy Grail. Ancient documents describe this Valencian Grail as the cup of the last supper. Investigations in 1960 have determined it to be an “Alexandrian vessel” going back to the I century BCE.
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much older than what Guieu or Lincoln hyped in the 1990s or 1970s:
On a déjà remarqué que la fièvre messianique gagnait généralement des sociétés menacées par un ennemi extérieur plus puissant ou atteintes d'une crise interne. A l'analogie des situations s'ajouta sans aucun doute, dans le cas du sébastianisme portugais, la référence consciente au Messie davidique, exemple diffusé par l'Écriture avec la valeur normative qu'on sait. On a pu écrire avec pertinence que le sébastianisme fut «la résurgence au Portugal du mythe judaïque du Cinquième Empire». Ce n'est pas ici le lieu d'étudier en détail l'oeuvre d'Antonio Vieira et ses sources; rappelons seulement que les moines d'Alcobaça lui avaient ouvert la voie en présentant Jésus comme le fondateur et le garant de la monarchie lusitane (1971:168). According to his book, which reached No 2 in the Scottish bestseller lists, and to the extensive website of The Royal House of Stewart (the family's preferred spelling), Prince Michael's claim to the throne is based on his being the true heir to James II (James VII of Scots), wrongfully deposed from the British throne in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. -...-The case of Sir Laurence Gardner illustrates well what everyone gets out of it. He's the author of The Bloodline Of The Holy Grail and Genesis Of The Grail Kings, best-selling pseudohistorical works that claim, in the usual way, that Jesus married and had children and has living descendants. Gardner's novel twist is to identify Prince Michael of Albany as Jesus's direct heir. Visitors to the Royal House of Stewart website are quickly directed to links through which they may purchase 'Sir' Laurence's books - or official Stewart paintings by Prince Michael's ambassador in Canada, 'Sir' Peter Robson; and so on. The patent preposterousness of this web of imposture has not deterred all sorts of respectable people and organisations from going along with it. The Bloodline Of The Holy Grail, which drew credibility from its foreword by Prince Michael, was serialised at length in a national tabloid, while 'Prince Michael' and 'Sir Laurence' have both been commissioned to write follow-up books. (The Man Who...1999:no page). In her diatribe against Campbell, Nugent1963 points out how -to herCampbell seems to neglect the prodigious birth aspects to the advantage of a characterization of heroism as open to all, especially the overwhelming majority, 1963
1995:The Heroic Career.
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whose birth is very ordinary. Becker already emphasized the point that “Society itself is a codified hero system”.
Yet Lecuppre's examples, as far away from myth as possible and yet so similar, show that the prodigious birth mytheme can be easily inserted into a carefully doctored narrative at any point in time. Many specialists agree that the prodigious birth was purposefully inserted into the political ascent narrative as young Alexander conquered Egypt.
The new item
-originating from either an oracle Alexander had
supposedly received, or from his position as reigning 'divine' Pharaoh- could then be elaborated and backdated as if it had been common knowledge since the beginning; this included fateful dreams and prodigies having befallen both King Philip and Queen Olympias before Alexander's birth 1964: “we only took on board the predictions and signs -...- after the event”.
A rising member of the party apparatus, Joseph Stalin was later lionized as Lenin's right-hand man, whose role at times matched or superseded Lenin's; conversely, party honchos fallen from favor (such as Trotsky 1965 or Yezhov1966) could have their roles demoted or simply erased from the accredited narrative.
In his apologetic dialogue Trypho (with an hypothetical Jewish Rabbi), 1964
Apparently, Olympias dreamt about being hit by a thunderbolt, and engulfed in flames; Philip dreamt about sealing his wife's body with the image of a lion. 1965 Pseudonym of Jewish-Russian thinker L.D. Bronstejn. 1966 Head of NKVD (secret police), he presided over Stalinist purges, but fell from favor, was arrested, brutalized and executed. Yezhov's figure was edited out of a famous picture as he strolled alongside Stalin.
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Church Father Justin Martyr ( 100-165 CE) accused Jewry to have maliciously and repeatedly altered the text of the sacred scriptures -notably the tree in Psalm 1; the contention about the virgin -in Hebrew simply “young woman”- giving birth in
Isaiah 7:141967- in order to edit nods he considered a prophecy about Jesus.
It turns out the maliciously edited text was Justin's (either he edited it, or owned a copy already edited), whereas the Hebrew scriptures originally carried no such mention. Christian Bishop Dionysius of Corinth (died 171 CE) complains (cited in Eusebius) how “fellow Christians tamper with the word of the lord himself” after they “filled with tares” Dionysius' own letters: forgery as a Christian cottage industry.
The “born of a virgin” seems to some (like Seeligmann) an echo of cries uttered at Egyptian sacred mysteries. The classical Greek term (in Homer, Aristotle and Strabo) “virgin” seems to refer to unmarried status and young age rather than to the sexually virgo intacta (intact virgin) of lore.
Finally, Pharaoh Amenophis III (XIV century BCE) accredited the version he was the son of Queen Mutemwiya and of the high god Ammon coming to her disguised as her husband Pharaoh Thutmose IV, which would later be the (mythical) case of Hercules, King Arthur etc. Earlier Pharaoh Queen Hatshepsut (XVI/XV century BCE) had also claimed to be the daughter of -again- the god Ammon coming to her mother Ahmose to conceive her without carnal intercourse 1967
“All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means 'God is with us'). ”.
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this time.
Amenophis III also commissioned scribes to examine extant records going possibly ten centuries back in time in order to reform religious customs. The cult of the Pharaoh as divine thus joined the cults devoted to Amun god of Thebes, Ra the sun god and Aten (Atun, Aton) the sun disk hailed as shepherd of humanity and -of course- light of the world: all attributes passed down to generations of gods and saviors then centuries into the future.
Even Renaissance cynosure Marsilio Ficino ( De Sole, 1493) posited the Sun as god ersatz, claiming god had “placed his tabernacle in the sun�, an idea Ficino's disciple Copernicus quickly appropriated. Maya ruler Pakal (603-683 CE) also bestowed upon his mother Zak-Kuk the title of divine mother (mother of three gods etc).
Yet it doesn't concern only royal lineages of bygone ages. What do Alexander Haley and Margaret Mead have in common? Apparently, very little: Haley was the author of best-selling and cult/opinion-leading book Roots (1976), whereas Mead was an acclaimed anthropologist, thus an entertainer (Haley) and a scientist (Mead).
Readers should not underestimate the influence that Haley's and Mead's work exerted on the society at large, and within the scientific community (Mead). Haley's work seemed to appear at the very peak of a surge in what popular culture
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calls 'blaxploitation'1968: a very handy addition to the salad bar of identities the U.S African community was helping itself to.
Beside a court case for plagiarism1969, Wright1970 argues that -in spite of some due diligence- Haley had been feeding his readers a hoax when he had trusted 'encyclopaedic informants':
It was in this regard that Haley was directed to Fofana. Haley was seeking his ancestry in the Gambia. He told his history to at least eight people, who undoubtedly told it to others, and who went out looking for someone to provide Haley what he wanted. It is not surprising they found Fofana. It is likely they could have found others, perhaps real griots to recite roughly the same story. (Wright 1981:211). In the meantime, the book [Roots] sold 1.5 million copies and Alex Haley had won a Pulitzer Prize. -...-The Roots hoax had enormous consequences, for the story it fabricated was used to inspire militancy in a generation of black people, and was a significant factor in the development of black political power in the post-civil rights movement 1970’s and 1980’s. Its influence persists to this day. Although the hoax has received considerable publicity, it’s still widely regarded as an authentic and inspirational legend, not uncommonly shown in the nation’s schools in order to sensitize white students to the black experience. The television miniseries it generated was viewed by an estimated 130 million people and broke existing Neilsen TV ratings. -...-So extensive was the hoax that Harvard professor Oscar Handlin observed. "A fraud’s a fraud...Historians are reluctant - cowardly about calling attention to factual errors when the general theme is in the right direction. That goes for foreign policy, for race, and for this book." (Wilcox 1994:29). The term refers to entertainment and cultural productions in the United States especially made to appeal to the African community. As a mere example Luke Cage, hero for hire, a comic strip published by Marvel (1972). Luke Cage in fact offers to put his super-powers to the service of those who hire him. In the comics Cage is an African sub-urban petty criminal who is taken into custody repeatedly, before an experiment gone wrong turns him into a sort of superman; the various detective Shaft or inspector Tibbs movies are another example, alongside sit-coms like The Jeffersons, Sanford&son etc. 1969 African-American writer Haley had to settle a dispute in court, recognizing he had plagiarized significant passages from a work by Harold Courlander. It may be interesting to add that Courlander was a White anthropologist. 1970 1981. 1968
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[An editor at Black militant group Nations Of Islam wrote]Maybe Alex Haley did make it all up. I don't give a damn. He was a great, great story-teller, no matter where the stories came from, and I wish I could grow up to be half as good at it as he was (cit. in Zemla 2002:no page). Much the same can be said about Mead's field trips and investigations 1971: Margaret Mead's 1928 proto-feminist and proto-liberationist scholarly account of Samoan society would amount to a hoax: her 'encyclopaedic informants' had apparently told her what she wanted to hear1972.
Both the bestselling male, Black commercial novelist mongering African consciousness, and the brilliant, White female scholar mongering feminist liberation were thus feeding their readers ( 'oppressed' African groups in seek of an identity; 'oppressed' women burning their brassières in the 'swinging Ninety-sixties' ) no other thing than a pro domo hoax:
It was American anthropology itself, rather than any Samoan adolescent, that was the chief source of the legend of the serial sexual adventuress. The disciplinary paradigm presided over by Franz Boas presupposed radical cultural pluralism; and Mead, under the heading of Samoan sexuality, seemed to provide all the evidence it needed, a clinching case. (Martin 2006:145). 1971 1972
Martin 2006. “ Her subsequent book. Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), claimed to give an unadorned account of uninhibited Samoan femininity, a snapshot of a society in which girls engage in blissful ("free and easy") sexual experimentation at a young age. Mead also set up a sharp contrast with North American girls. On the one hand, the young Polynesian female was an adept and an amateur of erotic encounters; on the other hand, her North American counterpart was a buttoned-up Puritan. It was not so surprising that Coming of Age in Samoa became something of an alternative Bible among sixties sexual radicals. -...- Mead's scenario of love in the South Seas, "under the palm trees" in her own phrase, started to unravel in the 1980s, when an Australian, Derek Freeman, denounced her narrative as a myth (Margaret Mead and Samoa, 1983). In his account, Samoan culture was in fact rigid, male-dominated, hierarchical, fundamentalist, fixated on premarital virginity. He even brought forward, as evidence, one of Mead's own sources who confessed—sixty-odd years after the event—that she and her friends had freely misled Mead by telling her what she wanted to hear, stories of innumerable moonlit rendezvous and sultry perfumed liaisons. In truth they remained strict conformists to the Samoan moral code. Mead herself later admitted she had been hoaxed.“ (Martin 2006:144ss).
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It turns out -once again- that the same petrified mythologies could be endlessly recycled to champion various causes at various points in time. The obsession with -or playing the 'card' of- gender and sexuality as polemic idols in no way is a province of XVIII century libertine writers such as de Sade, or lefty hippies in the 1960.
In 411 BCE, Aristophanes puts gender squabble on scene with Lysistrata, a pacifist play that includes women going on a sex strike. Lysistratas are ubiquitous. In 1991, red light district prostitutes in Amsterdam go on a sex strike to protest against immigration policies, for example. The extra-canonical Christian Acts Of
Paul And Thecla (II century CE) see the beloved Christian Saint go through all sorts of tribulation to preserve her virginity and faith, akin to Sadean heroines.
At some point, St. Thecla -whose worship would spread from the East to Spain- is thrown to the beasts as a transgressor (=the master of the beasts motif). A multiple gender divide appears:
9:1 Then Thecla was taken out of the hand of Trifina, stripped naked, had a girdle put on, and thrown into the place appointed for fighting with the beasts: and the lions and the bears were let loose upon her. 9:2 But a she-lion, which was of all the most fierce, ran to Thecla, and fell down at her feet. Upon which the multitude of women shouted aloud. (Hone 1820: no page). The “noble savage� of natural virtue was also a preferred icon during the Enlightenment. In the age of great explorations, Pacific Ocean societies also tantalized European novelty-seekers with magical accounts of either idyllic societies
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ruled according to natural law -such as Sade's fictional Tamoé-; or of alleged sexual spontaneity and effervescence1973 that very well lent themselves to manipulation with political purposes well before the XX century.
In 1943, Jewish-American anthropologist Regina Weltfish co-authored (with Ruth Benedict1974, both in Franz Boas' intellectual circle) a booklet for U.S armed forces The Races Of Mankind, a sort of very rudimentary war manifesto cartoonish in nature. They argued for the non-existence of races, in favor of elusive culturally acquired traits. The booklet, which lent a scientific veneer to a mixed agenda of U.S patriotism, antifascism and emotional inclusiveness, was apparently banned in 1944.
Supreme irony, as early as 1946, Weltfish ran into increasingly severe problems with the U.S establishment - eager to uncover so-called “un-american activities”- for her affiliations and advocacy in women's movements. Accused of Communist sympathies, her teaching appointment at Columbia was not renewed in 1953: the wartime gem of Races Of Mankind -now officially deemed subversive material- was held against her.
Kevin MacDonald writes:
My claim about Boas — supported by a great deal of evidence — is that he was motivated by a desire to end racial anti-Semitism (which was quite common at the time) and by a desire to demolish 1973 1974
Fernandez-Armesto 2004: lecture 6.05. Some sources claim Benedict and Mead might have been in a romantic relationship.
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developmental theories of culture that implied that contemporary European culture was the epitome of human accomplishment. This latter thrust of Boasian thinking is a typical result of social identity processes in which the outgroup is negatively valued, especially under conditions of between-group hostility. It is consistent with a theme of much of the writing on Jewish intellectual movements, including mine: These movements are often motivated by an attitude of hostility toward Europeans and their culture because of perceived history of irrational persecution. -...- Jewish identifications and the pursuit of perceived Jewish interests, particularly in advocating an ideology of cultural pluralism as a model for Western societies, has been the “invisible subject” of American anthropology—invisible because the ethnic identifications and ethnic interests of its advocates have been masked by a language of science in which such identifications and interests were publicly illegitimate. (no date, no page). The cross-fertilization of Jewish and African American intellectual traditions, pointed out by Moses and Asante, has taken many forms, including the link between Franz Boas and W. E. B. Du Bois (an intellectual ancestor who died a Communist, but who is claimed both by the ‘transformationist’ Walker and by the critic of Marxism Asante), and the Black Athena affair, which has seen M.Bernal variously depicted in the guise of an Afrocentrist, a pan-Semitist or a tacit legitimizer of a new historical pact between Jews and African Americans. And, as the reading of Shavit’s book suggests, the sheer impact of African American life induced new, and/or reawakened old, patterns in Jewish-American thinking. (De Moraes Farias 2003:338). What about the danger rash judgments pose? What if the hero is the rogue, and the rogue is the hero? Forces of light versus forces of darkness? Sloppy coincidences or awful conspiracies? What if the opposite applies? It turns out the opposite does apply:
Withstanding the Jewish-Bolshevik menace required support for the concept of race, the study of race, and White racial consciousness. Given the very real and successful efforts of Boas, Klineberg, and Montague to de-legitimize race science, they were the "natural enemy." As Jews, they could be identified as key to the conspiracy. Thus the "Boas conspiracy" writings demonized Boas for 1544
"brainwashing" American youth and caricatured him as an extreme environmental determinist, which he was decidedly not. In the extremist view of Boas, his Jewish identity was essential for explaining his position on race and culture, despite the fact that Boas did not practice Judaism or participate in organized Jewish life. His identity was as a German who believed in full assimilation for secular Jews with enlightenment values (see Glick, 1982). But extremists were not the only ones to use "Jewishness" in order to characterize Boas as a poor scientist or a propagandist. Anthropologist Leslie White (1966) presented a view of the Boasians as a closed Jewish clique from which Gentiles were actively excluded, a claim challenged vigorously by Opler (1967). Frank's (1997) analysis of Jewish identity in Boas and other anthropologists indicates the serious difficulties that attend the use of "Jewishness" as an explanation for an academic career. Boas's status as an assimilated German Jew is certainly important for historians to consider. However, the insidious assertions of White (1966), which resonated with old ideas of too many Jews with too much influence, lend themselves readily to a clearly antisemitic message: Jews are thought to function as a unit, and speak with one voice. The careful examination of the Boas myths illustrates the permeable ideological boundaries between cloistered academic settings and the world of political extremism. Arguments about the destructive role of Boas for Western Civilization moved quickly and easily from mainstream academics, to "concerned citizens" like Putnam, to extremists such as Rockwellextnote. Alliances between academics and neo-Nazi activists were facilitated by the belief that the study of race could be a politically and ideologically neutral enterprise, and it was therefore unnecessary to inquire into the politics of those who shared one's negative view of Boas. The present examination of the "Boas conspiracy theory" is a part of a larger study of such alliances and their meaning. (Winston 2001: no page). a revolution in anthropology was happening in America. Franz Boas, one of the great unsung heroes of the Western liberal tradition, was a professor of anthropology and a museum director in New York. He became the master of the most influential school of anthropologists in the world and advanced the discipline by encouraging his students to do fieldwork, which was a new idea at the time. -...- After anthropology had exposed that truth, it became impossible to justify imperialism in traditional terms again. Conversely, it became possible to rethink the relationship of one culture to another, along the lines of what we now call cultural relativism—the acknowledgement that e
xtnote
Different sources contend Rockwell was an informant and -by all accounts- his American Nazi Party was heavily infiltrated. (note of this writer).
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every culture deserves respect on its own terms. (Fernandez-Armesto 2004:72). It is opportune to add how the praise devoted to cultural pluralism/relatism is absolutely neither an 'invention', nor a prerogative of individual groups or minorities. De Sade, the XVIII century French nobleman -first marquis of France-, writer, pornographer and activist – served for a time as president of radical revolutionary section des piques- delivered a circular, vitriolic plea in favor of cultural pluralism and relativism. Sade would in fact spend a large part of his life in prison under different regimes (monarchy, revolution, Bonapartism).
It is therefore neither new, nor unexpected, to see members of outgroups -or out-groups as a whole- embrace cultural pluralism, hence relativism, as a weapon against their alleged institutionalized tormentors. Several centuries earlier, Buddhism had emphasized dependent co-arising, or reality as a mental construct coalescing from multiple co-dependent variables.
Such group dynamics are not uncommon. In late XVIII France, during what is often referred to as pre-revolution, noblesse de robe (a strand of nobility mostly serving the crown in the judicial and financial State apparatus) started to preach ideas that -although far from nihilism and maximalism that would soon dominate the upcoming revolution- still flirted with popular discontent and fueled hopes of (relatively) radical reforms.
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Rhetorics exposed and denounced in glamorous terms pitfalls -and inconsistencies in the state of affairs- under the catchy names of despotism and overpowering ministries. Massively excluded from election to revolutionary assemblies (that saw basse robe1975 on the raise ), haute robe1976 helped considerably with making the event possible. It turns out, Luke Skywalker in disguise never stops screaming his monosyllable.
While some fence endlessly with ideological foes to bring the discussion back in a circular fashion to their favorite version of apocalyptic stand off between what -to them- constitutes good versus evil, the same attitude -as this writing suggests- can be traced back to mythical punchlines about not casting the first stone because we all are potential sinners (latent homosexuals, liars, thieves, murderers or whichever other punchline might be used).
Well before that, Herodotus (V century BCE) had written:
For if one were to offer men to choose out of all the customs in the world such as seemed to them the best, they would examine the whole number, and end by preferring their own; so convinced are they that their own usages far surpass those of all others. Unless, therefore, a man was mad, it is not likely that he would make sport of such matters. That people have this feeling about their laws may be seen by very many proofs: among others, by the following. Darius, after he had got the kingdom, called into his presence certain Greeks who were at hand, and asked- "What he should pay them to eat the bodies of their fathers when they died?" To which they answered, that there was no sum that would tempt them to do such a thing. He The segment of robe (literally, low robe) on the fringe of privilege. It included famous names such as selfstyled nobles D'Esmoulins, D'Anton and De Robespierre. F.M. Arouet is today known by his pen name Voltaire: de Voltaire was, in fact, the prestigious -and totally fabricated- lineage he had concocted for himself. 1976 The segment of robe (literally, high robe) enjoying the highest privileges and rank. 1975
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then sent for certain Indians, of the race called Callatians, men who eat their fathers, and asked them, while the Greeks stood by, and knew by the help of an interpreter all that was said - "What he should give them to burn the bodies of their fathers at their decease?" The Indians exclaimed aloud, and bade him forbear such language. Such is men's wont herein; and Pindar was right, in my judgment, when he said, "Law is the king o'er all." (Book 3: no page).
The Cottingley Fairies, The Piltdown Man and The Archeoraptor all represent 'myths that became fact': Archeoraptor and The Piltdown Man as two 'missing links' needed to buttress Darwinian theories based on such a concept. It is always possible to find a papyrus, fossil, warehouse list, cablegram etc to buttress a certain conclusion, and a 'scientist' (or witness in good standing: ethos and pathos versus logos) to argue whichever case.
In the Cottingley case, a couple girls manufactured this story of fairies coming to see them in 1917; upon getting teased about it, they even found a way to prove it with pictures. Conan Doyle, spiritualists, and other personalities boarded the train as it seemed to fit their own agenda like a glove 1977.
That went on for almost seventy years; the two witnesses repeatedly swore it was nothing but the truth. In the early 1980s they finally admitted it was a forgery; an elaborate forgery that included experts and makeup artists (as in the 'dragon in a jar' case) to make cardboard cutouts from a book look like fairies on film.
1977
In 1550 the Protestant doctrine of cessation of miracles had been proclaimed in England. The negation of miracles opened a space for other sources of supernatural, namely demons, spirits etc.
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Cold fusion was also revealed to be a hoax. The famous 'bug of the year 2000' that was supposed to fry all computers' CPUs was another hoax. While the dreaded bug didn't show any power on old 286 computers, it goaded the masses into buying new -supposedly immune- computers. Various software suites promised to eradicate the pest that experts from all corners of the world said would -indeedbring us back to the stone age just in time for the world's end in the year 2.000.
Was that just a lark on time for the year 2.000? Hardly. The time to possibly go back to the stone age after the disablement of the I.T. infrastructure has been postponed to July 9, 2012, when “DNS changer� - a computer virus spread ages earlier by a rogue international syndicate- would detonate, thus depriving the public of what ought to have been a privilege of Mayan prophecies. Alternatively, the final doom shall unfold in conjunction with the next massive solar storm, of which several happen every year. Mythicist Gregg Braden almost entirely relies on a salad bar of factoids and posh scientific nods to lend credit to wild spiritualist or new-age claims. There again, it is about old wine in new skins.
'Creative science' is not only confined to the fringes. What length would stupendous people not go for their fabulous idea(l)s...:
If space really were curved by the gravity of a large planet or a big star, then faraway stars would seem to shift their position a very tiny bit when they were near a planet in the sky, because light from those stars would change direct ion as it passed through the warped space near that planet. With really good measuring instruments, scientists might be able to measure whether or not the observed position of a distant star really did shift when its light rays had to pass by anot her 1549
big object on the way to earth. But there was a complicating factor: even Newton's older theory predicted that gravity would cause light rays to bend. In 1916, Einstein used his theory to predict that the degree of Hght shift would be about twice that predicted by Newtonian physics. This provided a way to experimentally check the theory. Given the measuring equipment of that time, the sun was the only body large enough to create an effect big enough that the difference between the two theories' predictions could be measured accurately. But most of th e time, the sun's light made it impossible to see faraway stars behind it. The best opportunity to sec these faraway stars came with the 1919 solar eclipse, when the moon would block the sun's light, allowing th e stars behind it to be seen and measured. A team of British physicists led by Arthur Eddington traveled to the island of Principe. off the coast of West Africa, where they knew they'd have the best view. Eddington already believed in Einstein's theory and he was well known in Britain as an advocate of general relativity. When Eddington returned, he claimed that his observations supported Einstein's prediction, and he convinced the scientific community that general relativity was correct. However, in the 1980s historians discovered that Eddington did not get conclusive evidence; he doctored his results. Scientists now know that there was no way Eddington could have successfully measured the light shift with the primitive equipment that he had available. In 1962 a much betterequipped British team tried to reproduce Eddington's findings. The expedition ended in failure, and the team concluded that the method was too difficult to work (Sawyer 2012:372). War propaganda's quintessential trickster is refurbished to go along with the networked society. There is a fifth-columnist lurking under every stone left unturned ready to march on town at a designated time on one hand; on the other, there is a virus in (almost) every computer ready to detonate at a designated time...
Zealots 'clip edges' to preserve the 'good cause' (Darwinism, U.S foreign policy, the IT industry, psychotic fixations of the 1960s...) in whose name all is justifiable (the if...then strategy). Pressure is also a crucial component to successfully coax the masses into doing the persuader's bidding (sale pressure, narrative tension
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and tragic urgency): the 'great cause' (the world, our health, the future of children, the ozone layer, white elephants, central bank's solvency...) is at stake right here and now, and action must be taken immediately upon notice lest doom unfold.
A specialist on influence mechanisms, psychologist Cialdini categorically states people are much more likely to embrace the same proposal when coated in terms of loss than in terms of gain. Highly interesting is what the Cottingley witnesses thought about deceiving so many people for so long: “people wanted to be taken in”, “they wanted to believe”, “we did not have to tell a lie at all, because every time someone came out to justify it”1978.
Myth must -at some point or another- become fact to lend believers credibility in the maze of myths, pseudo-myths and related imagery that haunt humans since time immemorial. If Hercules wrestled the immortal lion to deliver peasants from that threat, that would look just like another strongman myth among many; Putin -on the other hand- did save a TV crew from an Amur tiger according to Reuters (September 2, 2008).
Arnold Schwarzenegger describes his days of young rising bodybuilding star in Munich thus:
Every bodybuilder in Munich wanted to train with Arnold. They thought I knew some secret. -...- We ate enormous meals -...- we ended like doing something like fifty-five sets of squat each. -...Sometimes it became pure insanity -...- we got into this trip that we 1978
Clarke 1985: Fairies, Phantoms And Fantastic Photographs.
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were gladiators, male animals. We swam naked out in nature, had all this food, wine and women -...-.Every year, in the spring, a stonelifting contest is held in Munich -...- the stone weighs approximately 508 German pounds -...-[and I, in 1967] broke the existing record -...-. The press picked it up and wrote that Mr. Universe was the strongest man in Germany- which may or may not have been true (Schwarzenegger& Kent Hall 1979:84-86). It is hard not to recall the feats of Hercules, and other mythological heroes larger than life. Moreover, Schwarzenegger often repeats his inner premonition he would – as he did- become one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time.
Born in 1936, Berlusconi -on the other hand, and in spite of wearing a pace-maker- took up jogging in 2012. He assertedly does 72 push-ups ( flessioni) every morning, alternatively claiming to feel like a 56 or 35 year-old. The daily push-ups increase to 100 according to parliamentarian -and Berlusconi's aide- M.R. Rossi1979.
Davy Crockett claimed “if I didn't make Mexican heads fly about as thick as horsechestnuts in a hurricane, then melt me into iron for steambilers ” after reaching the battlefield “astride a fabulous bear that can outrun a thunderbolt” 1980. Even academics discussing fine points of doctrine seem to hold that the scholarly consensus wants King Arthur to be a real, historical figure, although they may both take a demythologizing approach, and offer several likely candidates for the role of Arthur: myth ought to have become fact1981. 1979 1980 1981
Ferrucci 2012: no page. Cited in Brown 1983:75. Armstrong 2009:King Arthur.
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Showing what historiography is mostly about, Noble 1982 adamantly states that Arthur never existed: the 'fact' is just a myth, a collection of stories. Fears 1983 takes the middle ground: he quotes W.Churchill saying “it does no harm” to posit the existence of this great chieftain who valiantly stood up, and conquered, a powerful and barbarous foe, or Churchill's not so allegorical characterization of Germany as WWII loomed on the horizon. Fears furthermore characterizes Arthur as a Romanized Christian Briton. Once again, mythologized ancient history serves as validation of all too crass present day political advocacy.
The same can be applied to many pseudo-historical figures: Goldman explicitly states Gilgamesh lived between 2700 and 2600 BCE 1984, whereas other consider him as either purely mythical, or the mythological spinning of tales around a modest kernel of historical truth a la William Tell.
Romulus is no exception: Fears1985 protests vehemently against the “nonsense” put forth by those who doubt Romulus was a real historical figure. Of course, many scholars think just that. The archaeological remains possibly showing early settlements at Rome in the VIII century BCE do not necessarily 'prove' that Romulus existed as a single historical figure, however. As well, the seven Kings of Rome -much as Egyptian lists of very early monarchs- are steeped into myth, and cover a span of time too great for a handful of real historical figures to have covered.
1982 1983 1984 1985
2008: Celt and Saxon in the British isles. 2011: King Arthur. 2003:Studying Ancient Near Eastern Myth. 2011:Lays Of Ancient Rome.
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Indian sage Kautilya (370-283 BCE) advised rulers to follow machiavellian policies based upon commodious expediency and outcome (his book
Arthashastra): the structure of the Mauryan Empire (321-185 BCE) inspired him. He also drafted a model schedule for the ideal King, in which the ruler only gets about 4 hours of daily sleep, being otherwise busy attending to matters of State (entertaining spies, administrators, military duties etc) in 1,5h slots. Even Japanese lawgiver Prince Shotoku advised bureaucrats in his Constitution (604 CE) to start working in early morning and to retire late.
Japanese intellectual Lady Murasaki
(X-XI century) delivered her
version of this universal man (“shining prince�) in her extended Tale Of Genji. It surprisingly comes back nearly verbatim in Castiglione's 1528 Cortegiano – or Renaissance's ideal man-.
The same hectic schedules, exhausting feats and unending multi-tasking recur, which characterize the 'brave new man' of utopian Social-communism, the James Bond of fiction, not to mention the increasingly merrier, creative automaton of industrial taylorism and fordism working in a factory to bring the fantasy world of oversupply -and ensuing social progress and oneness- to fruition, which ecstatic reformers and fist-shaking agitators never stopped babbling about on all extremes of the political spectrum.
Is this transition limited to hagiographical portrait of statesmen and more or less mythical princes? Hardly. In the late 1960s, a Japanese manga 1554
popularized Tiger Mask. 'Bad guy' wrestler member of an international rogue syndicate and famous for his foul play repents and starts championing fair play. He thus becomes the rogue syndicate's target for elimination: he stops sending them monies in order to fund an orphanage instead.
Various real-life wrestlers would over the years don a tiger mask, thus making the myth become fact. The fact the fictional story included real-life wrestlers (such as Antonio Inoki and Giant Baba) lent some (unwarranted) credibility to the rumor that this, that or another Tiger Mask was -in fact- the one whose 'hero's journey' the manga and cartoon recounted. WWF wrestler Hercules Hernandez (1956-2004) claimed on video to be “that famous Hercules� of mythology: the myth had become fact.
In truth, the storyline in the cartoon was presented as authentic, in spite of the supernatural feats of strength depicted. No mention was made of the orchestrated character of wrestling story-lines (=kayfabe); no mention, either, of the fact that decent audio and video equipment allows to clearly see how real-life wrestling moves are mostly choreographed stunts and not full-contact blows.
A parallel with the Christian Gospel might be established. Christian apologists often defend the Gospel's historicity by claiming it includes figures present in history beyond doubt, such as Pontius Pilate; so the Tiger Mask cartoon presents real-life wrestlers such as Giant Baba (1938-1999), Jack Brisco (1941-2010), Inoki, and a host of others such as Lou Thesz, Bobo Brazil, Kintaro Ooki etc. 1555
Some elated fans even maintain Tiger Mask existed “somewhere”, although records survive of none of his many matches (with the exception of later clones and impersonators), just as Jesus (or Socrates) left no record of their own. The Tiger Mask cartoon presents real-life wrestlers from the recent past: does it ensue Tiger Mask ought to have existed, then? In perfect keeping with hyperreality, there probably is a Tiger Mask chap wrestling “somewhere” right now, just as there is someone who claims to have met -or conversed with- Jesus “sometime” this week; or who claims to have stuck his fingers in the open wound of a(nother) bayoneted baby “someplace else”.
When a U.S WWII veteran claimed he had killed up to 500 (600, numbers varied in the press) Japanese all by himself in New Guinea in 1942 – a feat worth of any Achilles or Hercules one might conjure up-, the only contention was the possible interference of racists who had assertedly denied him his due honors and recognition only because he happened to belong to a minority group 1986.
A long legal battle ensued, whereby the army jousted with powerful, upset minority lobbies. The veteran's demands were not met after the army's official investigation, however:
In a reflection of the delicacy of the matter, the legislators said the investigation did not go directly to the issue of [racism]. Army officials and members of Congress were careful not to portray [the veteran] as a deliberate liar, saying instead that he had acted honorably in the war but that he and his supporters were victims of memory fogged by the 1986
Cited in Wilcox 1990:20.
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passage of years. -...- Critical to [the veteran]'s claim was the photograph of a group of Japanese soldiers with a message in Japanese on the back saying, ''Six hundred fine soldiers died because of a solitary American soldier.'' But Edward J. Drea, a military historian fluent in Japanese, cited internal and external evidence to assert that the inscription was ''spurious'' and ''fraudulent.'' (Halloran 1989: no page). In 1959, America’s “last surviving Civil War veteran,” Walter Williams, died. He was given a princely funeral, including a parade that tens of thousands gathered to see, and an official week of mourning. Many years later, however, a journalist named William Marvel discovered that Williams had been only five years old when the war began, which meant he wouldn’t have been old enough at any point to serve in the military in any capacity. It gets worse, though. The title that Walter Williams bore falsely to the grave had been passed to him from a man named John Salling, who, as Marvel discovered, had also falsely called himself the oldest Civil War veteran. In fact, Marvel claims that the last dozen of so-called oldest Civil War veterans were all phony. (Ariely 2012:76). Another Korean war veteran (deceased in combat) from the same minority background was indeed awarded a medal. A Democratic politician from Florida, however, proposed a bill in 2001 to the effect that
If the legislation becomes law, the Secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force would be required to review the records of all [minority group] war veterans who received the Distinguished Service Cross, the Navy Cross or the Air Force Cross to determine whether the Congressional Medals of Honor were warranted. The [minority group] War Veterans organization would be authorized to submit additional names for consideration. (Harrison 2001:no page). Those are motifs so dear to the human psyche that they are always paying dividends.
Lone heroes – a variant of the patriarch's arrival motif- enter the scene, 1557
and swiftly take care of business as the valiant knights of yore used to (Parsifal, Lancelot, Galahad, Gawain...). Schwarzenegger's lone character in
Commando
(1985), or in Raw Deal (1986) takes on, single-handedly and bloodily routs syndicates of mafiosi and spies. Robocop single-handedly takes on entire Detroit's ripe crime scene: surfeit and yet more surfeit.
Star Wars' Anakin Skywalker1987 enters the enemy's encampment at night to slaughter them all: a scene replayed in the Mahabharata (several centuries BCE). Fears1988 censors unreliable Mexican sources claiming Crockett surrendered -and was executed- at the Alamo: he prefers to remember Crockett to have died atop countless Mexican foes killed in hand-to-hand combat. Real life modeled upon fiction, fiction modeled upon real life, or the other way round: can anyone really tell the difference?
Since time immemorial veterans, like Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, have responded to the death of their comrades with unspeakable acts of revenge. The day after the ambush Tom went into a frenzy to a neighboring village, killing children, shooting an innocent farmer, and raping a Vietnamese woman. After that it became truly impossible for him to go home again in any meaningful way. (Van Der Kolk 2014:18). As seen, reference to the myth is used to 'excuse' or hail someone or something (for example an ideology with political undertones in the cases of Haley and Mead). At the height of yet another crisis, Italian statesman Berlusconi was Sci-fi buffs have outlined similarities between the pre-existing Dune and Star Wars stories. Failed interstellar warlord-messiah of wondround birth and with psychic powers fathers twins on a princess who dies of childbirth. Both twins are embroiled in interstellar warring intrigue with changing fortunes. 1988 2011: The Alamo. 1987
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bestowed “pseudo-sanctity”1989 upon by proxy when the Israeli government saluted his mother as righteous1990.
Galeazzo Ciano (Mussolini's son in law, and son of influential Fascist and war hero Costanzo1991) acquired “pseudo-sanctity” too -which he needed in his political ascent in spite of his high-ranking affiliations- when Pavolini swore his personal friend Galeazzo had been a member of a famous 1919 Fascist squad at the party's dawn, although nobody remembered seeing him: in antiquity it could have been being related to some ancient deity. Ciano was very grateful in return, which paved Pavolini's way to the highest political level.
Leon Degrelle -the Belgian Fascist leader and later Waffen SS Generalrecounts the lengths he went to insure his Belgian Wallon volunteers joined the coveted SS. He had not only to enjoy personal accolades as a decorated soldier, but to be warmly recommended at the highest military level and -finally- to run 'forensic investigations' to prove -to Himmler's fastidious standards- how Wallons were after all francophone Germans by a racial and cultural standpoint.
As Meineck said “ art [any creative production] responds to and provokes the prevailing cultural trends”1992. This concept is crucial in its manifold “[people who] enjoyed a fama sanctitatis, a reputation for sanctity they carefully nurtured since it was an appropriate stepping-stone for their "pilgrims' progress" towards power. Some of them were clearly connected to vast aristocratic plots and used as -...-ridiculous puppets in the hands of scheming parties. ”(Lecuppre 2006:205). 1990 Blog:2011, no page 1991 According to some sources, for a period Costanzo was designated to succeed Mussolini in the regime's hierarchy. 1992 Meineck 2005-2: Why Athens. 1989
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consequences and does not simply revolve around infantile morality or crass cynicism.
Different mythologies obsess different epochs:
We predicted that participants would take longer to read outcome sentences that mismatched biasing contexts. In line with our predictions, the interaction between biasing context and outcome was significant: Participants were, on average, 203 ms slower to read the outcome sentence if it was inconsistent (i.e., stories containing success-biasing contexts followed by failed outcomes or failure-biasing contexts followed by successful outcomes: M = 2725 ms), compared to when it was consistent with the earlier biasing context (i.e., stories containing success-biasing contexts followed by successful outcomes or failure-biasing contexts followed by failed outcomes: M = 2522 ms). (Rapp&Gerrig 2006:62). The popular UK sci-fi production of the late 1960s UFO capitalized on two of the period's hot pop cultural icons: organ transplants and space exploration. Transplant surgery then in its infancy promised to put in motion a circuit of human spare parts that soon enough would eradicate so many fatal diseases. Already in 1935, when Lindbergh and Carrell had perfected a perfusion pump to keep harvested organs alive, newspapers rejoiced:�one step nearer to immortality�.
Space exploration forecast deep space exploration, manned outer space bases, and other achievements that would satisfy even the most avid sci-fi reader. The UFO series mixed the two with equal parts of other popular culture fixations of the time (an interracial angle; the British driving on the road's right side; James Bond atmospheres etc).
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An alien race of invaders as elusive as technologically advanced raids Earth to kidnap humans in order to harvest organs and tissues for transplant; it goes without saying how a common urban legends links mysterious disappearances to the rogue international network of underground transplants still to this day.
Against extraterrestrials rises a secret world military organization in James Bond style equipped with sci-fi gadgetry: they operate out of a moon base, underground headquarters and marine caves. Some parts of the screenplay hit the wrong nerve with some press that accused the series of one '...ism' or another because it portrayed the coming of aliens as a threat after all.
Even the smallest of details reveal how the purported creativity of the allegedly gifted writers and visionaries imagining fantasy worlds to possibly vindicate political agendas is crassly reflecting a distorted image of their times: nothing more. Although set in a then far-flung future, UK sci-fi production Space
1999
(1975-77) never really left the seventies 1993: bell-bottom pants; analogic
control panels; thick-heeled shoes; hairstyles; pocket calculators as thick as bricks and futuristic intelligent computers running on punch cards...
In the 1960s, legendary explorer Cousteau built an “underwater village� off the coast of Sudan (documented in a 1964 award-winning tape World Without
Sun) following the suggestion of a U.S military physician. The idea quickly saturates popular culture: in 1972, Hannah&Barbera launch the cartoon Sealab 2020. 1993
In the series UFO, Moon base pilots reach their vehicles via chutes, which are uncannily similar to actual technology of the late 1960s, as seen for example in Cousteau's documentaries.
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Even Space 1999 “respond[ed] to and provoke[d] the prevailing cultural trends” by pillorying an alien race called Darians in one episode: readers may easily guess what that nods at.
In 1978, the Italian adaptation of the French adaptation of a Japanese cartoon (Goldrake, French Goldorak) took the public by storm. Although set in a far-flung future, the soundtrack that introduced the cartoon mentioned “circuiti di mille valvole (thousand-valve circuitry)”: the meta-historical future looked so similar to technology outdated already (then) in the seventies.
Japanese cartoons and productions of the 1970s often included western/cowboy elements -such as soundtracks or backdrops- that had nothing to do with the main storyline -typically sci-fi-, yet the Japanese of the 1970s were fond of U.S western/frontier movies.
Still in 1970s Japan, the heroes of sci-fi cartoons were typically maladaptive, male youth; suburban bullies rode their radio-equipped motorbikes, thus anticipating the terminal-man of later years: “ art [any creative production] responds to and provokes the prevailing cultural trends” 1994.
As the internet became a tool of mass entertainment and recourse, it also started to creep through popular culture, as the 1995 movie The Net epitomized; a garbled salad bar of potential dangers related to one's presence online such as
1994
Meineck 2005-2: Why Athens.
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identity theft, industrial espionage, ambiguous situations and danger oozing in all sort of ways from the computer screen people may get hooked to.
The very early 1990s saw a surge in such dramas axed around telephone lines and interactions: maniacs and nasty encounters might all materialize out of a telephone chat room, an item very popular before the internet revolution. Are readers not interested in mainstream Hollywood, perchance? Has the phone slipped out of fashion nowadays? What about Ragazze In Web (2011)? Danger lurks in the world of internet porn web cam sites two female students work in: thriller and ethical dramas rolled in a TV movie.
In 2001 it was the turn of Swordfish, another movie beating the concept of I.T, hackers and criminal exploits to death. Popular culture had started toying with cryptography right then, as it was being made available to the general public through some noted software suites; swordfish being, exactly, one of the then popular cryptographic algorithms: synchronicity, indeed.
The fad had a long history stretching back through Sneakers (1992) and
Wargames (1983)1995, which linked a then rudimentary, rising I.T culture for the masses with then popular phobias such as the impending 'nuclear holocaust' and -of course- a hefty dose of petrified mythologies such as an average layman in pursuit of diversion who finds himself facing issues or threats beyond belief 1996. 1995
As argued earlier, before the internet took over, computers were mostly inserted in story-lines revolving around the telephone network. With a broad brush, story-lines in Wargames or Sneakers revolve around phone calls groomed into a spy story with technological elements. 1996 The movie Vamp (1986) -among others- adopts the same stale plot contrivance. College students on a bawdy
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In 1992 Sneakers, the changing of the guard among fads is made obvious: mafia and industrial espionage scenarios replace obsolete Cold War scenarios:
Those for whom security rather than economy was paramount preferred to use ciphers, which take longer to encode and decode (since individual letters rather than whole words are substituted) but are harder to crack. Yet while such codes and ciphers were a boon for users, they were extremely inconvenient for [Victorian] telegraph companies. Codes reduced their revenue, since fewer words were transmitted, and ciphers made life harder for operators, who found it more difficult to read and transmit gibberish than messages in everyday language. -...-messages in cipher were charged at a higher rate. (Standage 1998:113). At times the various clones from the most remote provinces of the worldwide Americanized empire beat the mainstream at its own game. Deepities (statements that sound supercharged with meaning but are intellectually hollow, faulty and/or ambiguous) and “word salads” steal the day.
In 1995 and 1996 Children and One&One, pieces performed and produced by noted DJ and musician Robert Miles, take the musical scene by storm with new age music and a cargo of gnostic motifs:”I love the one we are -...- let's stand still in time”. It helps to consider a very Italian Roberto Concina hid behind a pseudonym turning him into another orderly brick into the wall of the Americanized mainstream, and ensuing anglicized pidgin:
Another song, “I Am The Walrus,” apparently written during one of Lennon’s acid trips, contains the quizzical lyric, “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.” (Polimeni fraternity assignment visit the big city. After swerving in the midday city centre traffic jam, they instantly find themselves roaming at dusk in a semi-deserted ghetto teeming with aggressive street thugs, mischievious undead and swarms of hostile vampires.
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2012:187). The traditional Upaniśadic knowledge of identity is revealed: “soham” – “I am He” “sarvam khalvidam Brahma” – “All this verily is the Brahman” (Savardekar, MAISI014 no date: lecture 3:8). So Jesus said, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. (John 8:28, emphasis added). [ Vajrayana Buddhist master] Trungpa walked in tipsy and sat on the edge of the altar platform with his feet dangling. But he delivered a crystal-clear talk, which some felt had a quality – like Suzuki's talks – of not only being about the dharma but being itself the dharma (Chadwick 1999:ch.18). Complete Perfection Daoism began when Wang, while wandering around in a drunken stupor at the age of forty-eight, received revelation from two immortals who led him to a new synthesis of Daoism, Chan Buddhism, Neo-Confucianism, and old-fashioned asceticism. (Prothero 2010:103). Jesus said to them, "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter [the Kingdom]." (Gospel Of Thomas no date no page n.22). O Sariputra, Form does not differ from Emptiness And Emptiness does not differ from Form. Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form. The same is true for Feelings, Perceptions, Volitions and Consciousness. Sariputra, the characteristics of the Emptiness of all Dharmas are Non-Arising, Non-Ceasing, Non-Defiled, NonPure, Non-Increasing, Non-Decreasing. (Buddhist Heart Sutra). The old romantic nineteenth-century philosophers and scholars in Germany had the idea that the people produce the myths. Well, they don't! Myths come out of an elite mind like Black 1565
Elk's, whose dream then becomes a source of rituals. Myth has always come from visionaries, and all the traditions tell us this. For instance, the whole mythos of the Biblical tradition was supposed to have come from Moses, not from the Jewish people. It was he who brought it down from the mountain top. In the Old Testament, every time the people got into trouble, Moses went into himself, had a conversation with God, and then returned with more information.(Campbell&Boa 1989:131). Fascist regimes, for example, were obsessed with war, heroism, patriotic values, action squads etc. In the 1960s the fixation switched – in the wake of war propaganda- onto oppression, sexuality, racism and so forth. Staloff mentions that “there is no culture that defines itself in terms of its own past to the same extent as that of the West”1997:”the Apocalypse in the East never became mainstream; it never became a dominant force in eastern culture. -...- The Apocalypse becomes mainstream in the West”1998. Intellectual historian M.S. Roth quips that history breeds pathology, as it was Freud's original intuition. Chinese Communist chairman Mao declared to the Dalai Lama how “religion is poison”.
That explains how today it is trendy to speculate upon Gautama Buddha's attitude towards women. Is this concern really relevant to the thought of a sage who lived in the VI -or according to some tradition as early as the X-XIcentury BCE? Did the Graeco-Romans practice pederasty, or were they really pedophiles? Was the Inca Empire a Socialist State? Was Sparta a sort of feminist paradise? It boggles one's mind to apply mid-XX century polemics to civilizations twenty or more centuries in the past. 1997 1998
1995:Issues And Problems. Williamson 1995: Meet The Beast.
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Of course, if no political pamphlet of contemporary vintage could be written, historiography would lose most of its appeal. Nothing can escape the benevolent pen strokes of an elated votary ready to make allowances so that the 'great man' remains great:”Unfortunately, the Dardanelles campaign, as executed, was a disaster. ”1999. Of course, a snicky “as executed” 2000 can salvage every historical military blunder: Kennedy's, Hitler's, Louis Napoleon's...
Both Nietzsche and venerable Wuling (Pure Land Buddhist monastic) make of the ability to forget – to let the past go- a gage of moral superiority and spiritual achievement. Nietzsche's “active type” able to forget (master morality) faces the “reactive type” basking in remembrance, and thus resentment, or the prototypical Christian (slave morality). Solomon 2001 casts Nietzsche and his ideas as perfect byproducts of Darwinian theories popular at the time.
“There is no culture that defines itself in terms of its own past to the same extent as that of the West”. While readers may trace this mindset back to Graeco-Roman times, it is also true that -the present writer contends- only starting with the First World War -in the footsteps on Romanticism and the XIX century revolutions- has this fixation with the past being exaggerated to the point of a psychotic ritual (=the enactment of a myth) that involves a vast portion of the population, and not only upper classes and rulers busy imaging communities or 1999
Fears 2001:15. He refers to the expedition Churchill masterminded during WWI, which is nearly unanimously regarded as a disaster and as an useless maneuver. 2000 Is 'the great man of destiny' guilty, or rather should the blame not rest with obscure minions, butlers and other inept coolies down the chain of command? 2001 2000: Nietzsche: The Uebermensch And The Will To Power.
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rewriting history books.
Pre-Communist China, too, had a tendency to see the present through the more or less updated prism of a far-reaching past -for example China as the abode of the longest-lived centralized government in continuous existence in history-, and related philosophies -Confucianism, Legalism, Buddhism, Taoism...-, which had little in common with the psychotic morality plays and comedies of innocence taking center-stage in the West that -by all means- exchanges the relatively unified Chinese politico-philosophical horizon for a discombobulated jumble of increasingly post-Christian drift, war propaganda leftovers etc.
When Hermes' statues were mysteriously chipped (around 415 BCE), the Athenians' hatred exploded, and a famous process ensued; Thucydides writes:�So they were concerned to blow up the whole affair and make strident claims that the profanation of the Mysteries and the mutilation of the Herms were part of a plot to subvert the democracy. “2002. Subjects of French India well into the XX century developed a cult for mile markers on streets, which they assimilated to the Shiva
Lingam, a rough Indian equivalent of Greek Herms: they covered mile markers with flowers.
Modern readers may scoff at what amounts to larks or modest acts of vandalism superstitious archaic cultures blew irrationally out of proportion, yet it is enough to evoke other vandals who might deface and/or spray-paint the communal 2002
The Peloponnesian War 6.28.
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abode of this or that minority group with symbols of past regimes to see the average modern reader instantly rise in desecrated anger demanding just retribution flipping out in much the same way the Athenians did, and for the very same reason.
Also for the very same reasons, shortly before the Peloponnesian war erupted, Athens introduced impiety laws, an obvious kangaroo court to deal with politically unsavory characters. Pagan impiety laws would become Christian blasphemy laws, which would morph into our contemporary special, '...ist' laws.
In a rational society and among rational men, the burden of proof for any assertion rests on the man who makes the assertion. But among mystics, the burden of proof against any assertion rests on the listeners or the victims, and then, anything goes (Branden 1960/1969: lesson 3). President Wilson (a lefty Democrat) declared as the U.S entered WWI:”Conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty”;”Before the Government acts, discussion is proper; after action, obedience is a duty.-...-acquiescence on the part of the citizen becomes a duty”2003.
The administration also failed to pass a new peacetime sedition law like the one it imposed on the nation during the war (in 1919-20, Congress considered some seventy such bills). (Goldberg 2007:76). The same 'democratic' President Wilson also thought that:”Negroes are excited by a freedom they don't understand and are not equipped to handle the demands and privileges of citizenship ” and that “Oriental coolie-ism will give us 2003
U.S Democrat “great commoner” W.J. Bryan in 1917 as the U.S entered WWI.
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another race problem to solve, and surely we have had our lesson “.
In 1906-07, South Africa is ablaze as foreign agitators like Gandhi stir up the rage of dispossessed Indian coolies. Boer leader J.C. Smuts pledged in 1906 how “the Asiatic cancer [namely Indian coolies] ought to be resolutely eradicated”. In 1907, Boer General Botha made the campaign pledge to “drive the coolies out of the country within four years”.
The “mood of the times” clearly dominates here. Even a dirigiste leftist like Wilson can embrace 'racist views' as commonplace at large there and then. One more reason -in our day- to address why or how self-proclaimed “agnostics” like Bart Ehrman -or even atheists or non-Christians- can embrace the absolute historicity of the Jesus character.
“Crackpot theories” that jibe with the current socio-political climate abound. In 2010, a panel of UCLA psychologists announces the birth of “diversity psychology”. Although “Nazi science” was indeed sound as -to name one- to U.S space program was based upon it, the crackpot theory of “cosmic ice” 2004 was 2004
“The cosmic ice theory was “discovered” by the Austrian engineer Hanns Hörbiger in 1894 in the course of an epiphanic vision. He supposed ice to be the basic substance of all cosmic processes, most impressively materialized in the moon, the Milky Way, and the ether. Apart from purporting to explain all astronomical, geological, and meteorological phenomena, the Welteislehre was also said to be the foundation of a new “cosmic cultural history,” forming both a scientific and philosophical, poetic, and artistic “kosmotechnische Weltanschauung” (a cosmotechnical world view) that Hörbiger called an “astronomy of the invisible.” -...-The third period (1931–45) involved the adoption of the cosmic ice theory by the National Socialists and its institutionalization in their research organization "Ahnenerbe" (ancestral heritage). The Welteislehre had already been heavily and successfully promoted as the “German antithesis” of the “Jewish” theory of relativity in the late 1920s. After Hörbiger’s death in 1931, the followers of the cosmic ice theory came to the conclusion that, given the changing political situation in Germany, aligning the theory with National Socialism would eventually lead to its acceptance. What status did the cosmic ice theory subsequently have within the NS research system? Was it just another “obscure dogma,” the personal hobby of Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring and Hitler himself, or a field of research well integrated into the academic discourse of the time? What
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officially sanctioned as a fig leaf for the regime ruling Germany 1933-45.
About 15 percent of the students said yes or pretty close. Some 85 percent of students described everything from mild embarrassment to mortification when it came to the politics of their family members. (Brown 2017b:33). [Fascist] German students [in the 1920-30s] insisted that they be taught "German science" and "German logic." The black radicals [of the 1960s] wanted to be taught "black science" and "black logic" by black professors. They demanded a separate school tasked to "create the tools necessary for the formation of a black nation." They backed up these demands not with arguments but with violence and passionate assertion. -...-Diversity is now code for the immutable nature of racial identity. This idea, too, traces itself back to the neo-Romanticism of the Nazis. What was once the hallmark of Nazi thinking, forced on higher education at gunpoint, is now the height of intellectual sophistication.(Goldberg 2007:99). Agreeable bozos who wouldn't budge if one urinated on their best shoes become rabid, overzealous little Red Guards waving their societal little Red Book ready to do the loyalty dance: they are ready to go as far as 'the great cause' requires scoffing at collateral damage.
Is there a method to the madness? Ovid 2005 ponders this riddle when Piritous derides as made-up the story the river god Achelous just told as he had supposedly witnessed it. Of course, today it is fashionable to embrace Piritous' attitude puncturing the already improbable narratives of bizarre characters pretending to relay what just happened.
were the relations of Welteislehre and Deutsche Physik? -...- It showed that phenomena like the Welteislehre were not anachronistic, marginal ideas, but that these forms of “scientific esotericism� were instead an integral part of the discourse of modern science. � (Wessely no date:no page). 2005 Metamorphoses 8.611-678.
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Ovid goes further and relays how the audience disapproved of Piritous' words, until old and sage hero Lelex toed the party line and simply declared that whatever the gods will shall happen the way they decreed (=society's plausibility structure). ”Even if such claims had merit -...- [people] cannot ethically stand by this [statement] whose end result can only be furthering discrimination under the guise of academic discourse.”;”A destroyer of faith-...- places himself in great spiritual jeopardy. He is serving the wrong master, and unless he repents, he will not be among the faithful in the eternities.”: special interest hacks on the militant left and the Mormon Church eerily agree.
Most modern readers can hardly hold outbursts of laughter...river gods? People turned into islands? Gods of the sea? Yet it is enough to interpolate crucified Canadians, bayoneted babies, evil arch-dictators, '...ists' of one foul breed or another to see how it all makes sense and that whatever has been decreed shall be equally believed in the minutest detail; failure to comply invariably entails hazardous complications.
Rousseau had already explained people might be “forced to be free”; in perfect Enlightenment style, Chilean national motto reads Por La Razòn O La
Fuerza (either through reason or brute force): Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Amin and other 'great men of history' couldn't have said it better.
Controversially involved with the collaborationist Vichy government, future French Socialist President Mitterrand was even awarded the prestigious 1572
decoration francisque in 1943, symbol of the Vichy regime; he would flatly omit that portion of his past, skipping to when he became involved with the Resistance. When the embarrassing evidence reappeared, he was gotten off the hook when many prominent antifascists declared he had been an infiltrator in their service all along.
In 2013, a book by a former Secretario Nacional de Justiça in Brazil denounces (former) left-wing President Lula -who's mired in the Petrobras corruption scandal as well- as a “um dedo-duro do DOPS Paulista” (a tipster for the military intelligence in Sao Paulo) under the military dictatorship 2006.
French author of science fiction and erotic literature Jimmy Guieu (1926-2000)2007 involved himself in the controversial field of alien abductions, alien secret governments, the paranormal and so forth advocating related theories. In a taped series2008, Guieu repeatedly tried to bestow “pseudo-sanctity” upon himself declaiming how he had joined the French Resistance in his youth; that was supposedly to enhance his credibility and -by proxy- the credibility of his arguments in favor of alien abductions, paranormal phenomena, and what not.
2006
“No livro, Tuma Junior diz ter a convicção de que Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva foi um informante de Romeu Tuma, então chefe do Dops, lá no fim dos anos 1970, quando apenas líder sindical. Não é a primeira vez que a, como vamos chamar?, intimidade de petista com o regime militar é posta em debate. O delegado sugere que a colaboração tenha deixado rastro e dá uma dica: que se procurem as contribuições de um certo “Barba” com os órgãos de repressão. A esta altura, ninguém com um mínimo de honestidade intelectual pode ignorar que parte considerável do establishment militar via com bons olhos a emergência política do tal “sindicalista” porque avaliava — e com razão neste particular — que sua ascensão enfraqueceria os líderes pré-64 que voltaram ao Brasil com a aprovação da Lei da Anistia. ” (Azevedo 2013:no page). 2007 1991ss. 2008 Guieu 1991ss.
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Mythicist Jordan Maxwell repeatedly claims he got confidential insight via phone calls with a noted rabbi in the 1960s regarding some counter-cultural facts about Judaism. In all likelihood, he got that information from a public book Rabbi Antelman -whom Maxwell misrepresents in some official, high-ranking capacity within the Jewish community- published in 1974.
Caroline Myss relays a story she assures she got “directly from” visionary Navaho artist David Chethlahe Paladin (1926-1984): it turns out people who repeat the same story (“call back your spirit or die”) are a dime a dozen. Either mister Paladin was a very talkative man, or people just got the story from some source on tape or in print, then decided to “upgrade it” by claiming a “spiritual bequest” from the “great man”, often with details that vary from one rendition to the next.
In a paradoxical situation that becomes all too common in these insider's tales, Maxwell has been caught on tape giving
alternative -if not conflicting-
accounts of what he otherwise presents as the same, sharp eye-witness story about these eminent family members of his (judges, congressmen, Vatican bureaucrats), who shared secret insight about how the powerful run the world behind the curtain.
Maxwell's uncle working at the Holy See alternatively becomes his or his mother's uncle; a civilian; a Catholic priest; a petty mobster figure:”After this, it is not surprising to find that no two authors who describe the deeds of William Tell agree in the details of topography and chronology.”. Readers would be hard-pressed 1574
to pinpoint the elusive uncle, as Jordan -or Jordon as billed in some instancesMaxwell is apparently just a pseudonym. Jimmy Guieu also had a few pseudonyms he went under.
Bonnie Lange, who claims to have sponsored and promoted mythicists such as Maxwell and David Icke, paints a very uncomplimentary portrait of Maxwell as a crook, a liar and an amateur of little substance 2009. She even quotes Maxwell's brother -formerly an employee of hers- who admitted he had no clue about Jordan's head trips: they never had any relative working at the Vatican. Furthermore, Maxwell nowadays claims to have spent 50 (yes, fifty) years researching freemasonry, symbolism etc. As many in mythicist circles, and internet searches, attest, Maxwell only surfaced no sooner than 1989-90: a lot less than fifty years back.
Such cases are not uncommon. As it is the case with cable TV productions, the same actors play different roles with impeccable gamesmanship while the frazzled crowd cheers every incarnation with relentless enthusiasm:
To those who knew him, or thought they knew him, he was a cerebral, fun-loving gadfly who hosted boozy gatherings for Hollywood's political conservatives. David Stein brought rightwing congressmen, celebrities, writers and entertainment industry figures together for shindigs, closed to outsiders, where they could scorn liberals and proclaim their true beliefs. Over the past five years Stein's organisation, Republican Party Animals, drew hundreds to regular events in and around Los Angeles, making him a darling of conservative blogs and talkshows. That 2009
No date.
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he made respected documentaries on the Holocaust added intellectual cachet and Jewish support to Stein's cocktail of politics, irreverence and rock and roll. There was just one problem. Stein was not who he claimed. His real name can be revealed for the first time publicly – a close circle of confidants only found out the truth recently – as David Cole extnote. And under that name he was once a reviled Holocaust revisionist -...-. He changed identities in January 1998. -...-Some of Stein/Cole's erstwhile friends are media figures with blogs, newspaper columns and syndicated radio shows. They put a lid on the story. Not a word has been published or broadcast. -...-As Stein, however, he shielded his viewsextnote, not least during the next stage of his career odyssey: the maker of respectable, conventional Holocaust documentaries. He knew the subject, extnote
“In 1994 he co-founded the Tinbergen Archives, a Holocaust education institution and research facility in Beverly Hills, California, and he served as its director of operations from 1994 until 2004. The Tinbergen Archives was named in honor of Isaac Tinbergen, a Jewish victim of the Holocaust who, on the eve of his death, implored his fellow Dutch Jews to "record and remember" their experiences. Under David Stein's directorship, the Tinbergen Archives became one of the leading suppliers of Holocaust education materials to colleges and universities in North America. In 1996 David created the documentary film division of the Tinbergen Archives, and over the course of the next eight years he produced over a dozen internationally renowned documentary films about the Holocaust, World War II, and the struggle of peoples around the world against racism and intolerance. ” The IMDB pages apparently never mention Cole the revisionist (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1783655/bio). In his memoir Republican Party Animal (2014:ch.8), David Cole first talks about the “Archives”:”In the most surreal moment of all, Laurence Moss, an economics professor at Harvard and Tufts, claimed [in print] to have actually visited the "Tinbergen Archives" (you know, the thing that existed entirely in my head).”. Then he discloses where he got the “Tinbergen” bit really from:” I had always joked that Forbidden World, the film from which I took the name “Cal Tinbergen," was so obscure, ” (ch.8). (Note of this writer). extnote Once exposed, Stein lost his status as mainstream conservative figure. Stein/Cole claims a paramour of his outed him. It is not far-fetched to hypothesize how forces occultes might have double-crossed the infiltrator (that is, double agent Cole/Stein). He apparently reverted back to his former self as Cole. He started milling outrageous nonsense for the consumption of judeophobes just as he had been doing in the old days. The crowd -whether ortho- or heterodox- automatically cheers for the Cole countercultural -or Stein mainstreamincarnation as if the other side of the coin had never existed. Every side argues how David kept the inner fire burning, and that the other incarnation was just a con game to show how gullible the other side really is. The person one perceives as a tartuffe with a dishonest heart may be an enlightened being who “plays” with popular piety and conventional truth in order to get “ultimate truth” across. The same applies to Hal Turner, a supposed rouser of racist rabbles outed as a FBI informant. Clues suggest that David might have indifferently played the ortho- and heterodox tune at the same time all along, just like Hulk Hogan happened to play the 'bad guy' for one wrestling promotion, and the 'good guy' for another. In Republican Party Animal (2014:ch.8), Cole admits he was at the same time milling ortho- and heterodox documentaries under different pseudonyms such as “Desmond Boles” (heterodox) and “Cal Tinbergen” (orthodox):”[ he writes about his audiences that] in their own way, they all asked for it”; “they won't even notice. They'll be in that blissful state of mind that ideologues reach when they're being fed their intellectual morphine”;” I had strong contempt for my audience” (ch.8). Bible scholar R.M. Price also seems to play different personas to the antithetical delight of skeptic atheists on the left, and of Church-going chauvinists on the right. Campaigning atheist Dan Barker ( The Thinking Atheist show n.40) discloses how he routed royalties he still receives from his “Christian music” from the 1970s -when he still was a Christian apologist- to a charity that helps poor women get abortions. (note of this writer).
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needed an income and US schools and universities had budgets to commission such projects. He said: "I gave mainstream audiences what they wanted." (Carroll 2013:no page). Italian Corrado Malanga, formally a university researcher in the field of chemistry, is another character trying to bestow pseudo-sanctity upon himself associating his capacity of scientist with that of 'authority' in matters of alien abductions and dabbler in matters of regressive hypnosis.
Equally, reference to a more or less mythologized worldview helps to damn or indict anyone or anything; here are some opinions:
If you are confronted with an assertion, there is a short way of getting rid of it, or, at any rate, of throwing suspicion on it, by putting it into some odious category; even though the connection is only apparent, or else of a loose character. You can say, for instance, “That is Manichaeism” or “It is Arianism,” or “Pelagianism,” or “Idealism,” or “Spinozism,” or “Pantheism,” or “Brownianism -...-. In making an objection of this kind, you take it for granted (1) that the assertion in question is identical with,or is at least contained in, the category cited —that is to say, you cry out, “Oh, I have heard that before”; and (2) that the system referred to has been entirely refuted, and does not contain a word of truth.( Schopenhauer 2004:18). The Europeans' enmity towards Israel cannot be detached from the Europeans' thousand-year hatred of the Jews and their shorter and much less lethal, but still palpable antipathy towards America. And thus we are back to the three standard pillars of classical antisemitism and anti-americanism. (Markovits, no date:96). Defamation is the destruction or attempted destruction of the reputation, status, character or standing in the community of a person or group of persons by wrongful, unfair, or malicious speech or publication.-...- In a ritual defamation the victim must have violated a particular taboo in some way, usually by expressing or identifying with a forbidden attitude, opinion or belief. It is not necessary that he "do" anything about it or undertake any course of action, only that he 1577
engage in some form of communication or expression -...-. To debate opens the issue up for examination and discussion on its merits, which is just what the ritual defamer is trying to avoid -...-. In order for a ritual defamation to be effective, the victim must be dehumanized to the extent that he becomes identical with the offending attitude, opinion or belief, and in a manner which distorts it to the point where it appears at its most extreme -...-.Ritual defamation is not necessarily an offense of being wrong or incorrect, but rather "insensitivity" and failing to observe social taboos -...-. Ritual defamation is an important means of social control (Wilcox 1990:42-43, emphasis added). Militant anti-racist and anti-fascist groups like militant groups of all kinds, including those that are patently racist, tend to see themselves in terms of their intentions, which they claim are selfless, noble and altruistic. A much clearer picture emerges when one views them as interest groups which, like virtually all interest groups, are engaged in benefiting a particular constituency. By claiming the so-called moral high ground, and appearing to act "for the good of others," they often manage to elude the kind of critical examination that befalls other less fortunately situated interest groups.(Wilcox 1998-9:14) Saul Kassin and his colleagues found that the credibility of an expert trial witness could be damaged merely by asking accusatory questions, such as, "Isn't it true that your work is poorly regarded by your colleagues?" The expert's credibility was damaged regardless of whether the accusation was denied or withdrawn by the lawyer after an objection was raised. Stanley Sue and his colleagues found that evidence prejudicial to a defendant would result in more convictions even when the evidence was ruled inadmissible. Numerous studies have found that negative pretrial publicity—such as reports of a confession, a failed lie detector test, the defendant's prior record, details of the case, and other information that was not admitted into trial testimony—can have a serious impact on jury decision making. (Pratkanis&Aronson 2011: ch.11, emphasis added). Building common ground, then, is not only a by-product of recognizing the indirection itself, but is essential to keeping the criticism, and the person advancing it, 'safe'. (Carlos 2007:2). When I am with those who are weak, I share their weakness, for I want to bring the weak to Christ. Yes, I try to find common ground with everyone, doing everything I can to save some. ( 1 Corinthians 9:22).
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the abstract virtues exemplified in a Saint must accurately reflect those of its target community. But, more importantly (at least regarding its capacity to inspire) the Saint herself (or himself) must be relevant and identifiable to that community. (Hunt 2001:41). Rather, myths, like dreams, characteristically license fusions of categories and identities normally held discrete. -...- It is because myths rely on dream-logic that the word "myth," at least in one of its senses, preserves the connotations of falsehood and fallacy.-...- Myths rarely mean simply and solely what they seem to say. They often serve more faithfully to celebrate than to explain (Goodman 1993:5657).
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LONG LIVED
The very same stories and situations have circulated for decades, centuries, if not for thousands of years, in spite of having been obviously tampered with. The very pliable, Barnum-like nature of certain cliches has made them palatable to different cultures over immemorial spans of time.
Even if we set aside the recurring references to 'the hero's journey', Hercules, Caesar, Alexander, Theseus and the best known myths, a XIII century Dominican manuscript mentions the peasant cult devoted to thaumaturge Saint Guinefort, a dog that saved his master's infant son from a serpent but was killed in error because the master assumed him to be the attacker 2010: be wary of rash acts and judgments. The same story recurs in Indian panchatantra (several centuries BCE); in that case the faithful animal is a mongoose, a sort of ancient Rikki Tikki Tavi.
An identical story is still told today, and the cult of Saint Guinefort was still alive in the first half of the XX century, in spite of the Church's effort to suppress it. The dog-headed incarnation of San Cristoforo may represent a nod to Anubis, the Egyptian jackal-headed god who served as ferryboat man for the deceased2011; an astronomical nod; a nod to Saint Guinefort at Lyon also celebrated on July 25 (canicola =period of the heat waves, from canis=dog).
2010
This theme (“beware of rash acts�) is overused in chivalric literature. Quite often knights joust or fight, and when they take their helmet off become aware they were fighting their friends or relatives (Parzifal and his half-brother Feirefiz for example). 2011 In the Legenda Aurea, Cristoforo helps the infant Jesus to cross a river.
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In Japan, the dog Hachiko would try to meet his deceased owner every day for nine years until the dog's death in 1935. Statues have been erected; a day (April 8th) has been set apart; a train station exit has been named to commemorate Hachiko's (dubbed “the faithful dog”) relentless attempts at greeting his deceased owner at the appointed place and time. Hachiko's loyalty was co-opted to serve Japanese imperialism in the following years (=all the Japanese as one rallying behind the divine Emperor). While Hachiko is indeed an historical figure, similar stories have cropped up in the press all over the world.
Being wary of rash judgments is a cherished motif that can stew in all sauces, such as Gianni Morandi's 1965 love song (and ensuing romantic movie 2012)
Non Son Degno Di Te (unworthy of you), which chronicles the misunderstanding between two young lovers thus: “E va bene così, me ne vado da te -...- ma al mondo non esiste nessuno che non ha sbagliato una volta” (Alright, I depart from you -...but there is nobody alive who hasn't made at least one mistake). Furthermore, the movie ends with a fabulous reunion scene, an embrace and a kiss that would melt even a 'heart of darkness'.
In a tsunami of sentimentalism, readers easily recognize the favorite motifs of the sullen departure (=grief, death, pain); the rash (mis)judgment motif; the choice that entails suffering motif; the punchline that either everybody makes mistakes (= don't cast the first stone); or to listen to one's heart, much as Darth 2012
A curious trivia is that Morandi's character in the movie is named Gianni Traimonti (literally: John betwixtthe-mountains), an awkward name on par with Luke Skywalker or Road Runner.
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Vader urges Luke Skywalker in the famous recognition scene.
The savior-hero-founder who refuses to cast the first stone in the lore becomes the positive psychologist granting one “the permission to be human”:
Therapeutic re-education is therefore at once a difficult and yet modest procedure. It teaches the patient-student how to live with the contradictions that combine to make him into a unique personality; this it does in contrast to the older moral pedagogies, which tried to re-order the contradictions into a hierarchy of superior and inferior, good and evil, capabilities. To become a psychological man is thus to become kinder to the self as a whole, to the private parts of it as well as to the public ones, to the once inferior as well as to the formerly superior. While older character types were concentrating on the life task of trying to order the warring parts of th e personality into a hierarchy, modern pedagogies, reflecting the changing self-conception of this culture, are far more egalitarian: it is the task of psychological man to develop an informed (i.e., healthy) respect for the sovereign and unresolvable basic contradictions that make him the singularly complicated human being he is. (Rieff 2006:45). Popular culture is never far behind. 1996 international hit song One&One recites:”It's alright to fall apart sometimes -...- we all have an angry heart sometimes”.
At the end of Rambo II, fabulous 'real American' Rambo sullenly announces he doesn't know where he's going, and that he'll live day by day, just after claiming all he wants is for his country to love him as much as he loves it. Rambo had just came back from Vietnam's jungles, after the obliteration of a huge number of Communist foes of the free world (the Vietnamese and their Soviet masters), yet a (real-life) former Communist resister during WWII in Northern Italy
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expresses2013 the exact same concern: WWII Resistance heroes want to be loved, not celebrated.
If one's heart is properly listened to, a reunion ensues, which brings about reconciliation between the 'common humanity fellows' (and their god, optionally): a Catholic sacrament.
Holding grudges against ever ballooning populations of have-nots, drifters, felons, (illegal) immigrants, crooked politicians etc might in the long run put a kink in the societal machinery. Former Khmer Rouge militia men and their former opponents or victims have to hold hands as proud Cambodians lest society falls apart. A bastion of Marxist orthodoxy, Communist East Germany relied heavily on former Fascist Hitler Youth devotees: it's better to get reconciled and start spending or organizing some grand swindle anew so that money keeps changing hands for the benefit of all.
What [studies] suggests for us is a model of relationships in which we deny, as best we can, the anomalous cheating and stealing of others so that society in general can function. According to one view, this is actually an evolved behavior. (Feldman 2009:68). Social cooperatives handling illegal immigration allegedly found a new billionaire financial Eldorado in Italy. The Italian parliament investigates. EU operation FRONTEX director F. Leggeri declares that in the open seas a stampede takes place so that competing NGO may rescue immigrants from Africa, whom
2013
Giornale Di Arona, 26 April 2013.
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human traffickers supply with new zodiacs, satellite cellphones and phone numbers of a row of said NGO ready to rush to high sea rescue bypassing official EU FRONTEX agents2014. Rida Aysa, high-ranking officer with the Libyan coast guard, cautions2015 that international ONGs are literally directing illegal immigration to Italy by supplying logistic means -such as dinghies, phones- and ideological support (EX. Guaranteeing high sea rescue in every case).
Literal “battles at sea” take place between Libyan authorities, EU border patrols and a swarm of ONG ships to reach illegal immigrants first. ONG ships would purportedly signal to onshore human traffickers to come over with immigrants so that rescue can be staged in international waters: “those poor people”.
What about the clueless taxpayer? Refugees and immigrants -claim some- bring economic prosperity as another “deficit spending” opportunity. Both Catholic and lefty operations rush to secure as many immigrants as possible. Should the horde in fusion not “save” meek Congoids and Araboids from the execution chamber, the famine, TBC, the death squad or any story that is told? At 35€ per day per person in subsidies, that's a real boon:”and what are a few dollars compared to a good story?”2016.
Listening to one's heart (soul...) is the befuddled rationalization of witnessing human mind's quirky reactions. Indeed, the hero's journey, the Ulysses 2014
Grignetti 2017:no page. ADNKRONOS, May 5, 2017. 2016 Ariely 2015:29. 2015
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shtick, the reunion/reconciliation shtick, the resilient savior-hero who goes ahead undaunted shtick -and countless others mythemes and exempla-
work their
wonders upon the human mind across cultures, ages and regimes.
Jewish-Canadian scholar Goffman interestingly wrote about:
The individual may desire, earn, and deserve deference, but by and large he is not allowed to give it to himself, being forced to seek it from others. In seeking it from others, he finds he has added reason for seeking them out, and in turn society is given added assurance that its members will enter into interaction and relationships with one another. If the individual could give himself the deference he desired there might be a tendency for society to disintegrate into islands inhabited by solitary cultish men, each in continuous worship at his own shrine. (2005:58). Although such a function may be carried on quite often, such mythemes and exempla are not the embodiment of the horde (=this, that or another horde coalescing under determinate circumstance at a precise time) in fusion kowtowing to itself, or the individual (=this, that or another individual acting under determinate circumstance at a precise time) using the horde as a proxy as Durkheim might have it.
When the horde is in fusion, both individuals and the group find the experience electrifying and irresistible indeed. The accent, however, is on the core mytheme (worshiping the hero's corpse, the hero's journey, becoming one...) rather than on the accessory details (worshiping the body of red heroes rather than black ones; becoming one to avenge a loss in a football match rather than a foreign policy debacle; the journey of this hero rather than that...). 1585
Rather, those mythemes play a function for the human mind that certain nutrients play in the human body: absence or depletion creates serious or even lifethreatening situations:
Staline comme la marchandise démodée sont dénoncés par ceux-là mêmes qui les ont imposés. Chaque nouveau mensonge de la publicité est aussi l’aveu de son mensonge précédent. Chaque écroulement d’une figure du pouvoir totalitaire révèle la communauté illusoire qui l’approuvait unanimement, et qui n’était qu’un agglomérat de solitudes sans illusions. (Debord 1967: point 70). media is no longer a collective experience but rather an individual experience. -...-There will soon be a way to avoid bad TV like this and watch only what you want to -...-And then the atomization of entertainment will be complete. (Twenge&Campbell 2009:118). The second way that ego depletion interacts with decision making is that decision making can cause depletion. According to some recent research, the act of making a decision is an act of the executive function and, as such, consumes some of those precious resources that are also required for self-control. The result is that after making decisions, we may have fewer of those resources available for other things, such as self-regulation.(Hamilton 2016:36). No matter how people cathect these exempla, mythemes, and the reactions they trigger, with preposterous spiritual or mystical qualities, such effects are comparable to that of a potent emetic or laxative -or some other medicine of that kind-: it is swiftly potent; the effect is assured, and can in very precise ways be beneficial and save lives, yet there is nothing mystical or paranormal about it. There is nothing mystical or especially gnostic about gastroenteritis and the diarrhea it typically causes: readers shall come to their own conclusions about how gnostic or mystical emotional diarrhea mythological images can cause might truly be.
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Bird2017 relates how Times printed a rumor in 1942 relating this story about a stranger who had claimed s-he hoped war would last long because s-he 2018 was doing well because of it; at which point several outraged people would rise and slap the incautious person 'because their boy had died at war'. The same rumor could be tracked back to Civil War times.
Another such urban legend revolves around the display of colored ribbons to parade allegiance to a particular cause. Santino plots the evolution of the practice:
The 1973 popular song "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Ole Oak Tree" is not a variant of "All Around My Hat." Instead, it is a popular narrative song that prominently features the idea of the public display of a yellow ribbon. According to certain newspaper accounts, the song is supposed to have been based on a true incident that occurred in Brunswick, Georgia (Buffalo News, 2 February 1991, sec. C., p. 1). However, there are numerous accounts of a similar story that circulated among the soldiers who fought in Vietnam. In these accounts of the story, which we would call an urban legend, a returning prisoner requested that his loved one tie a white kerchief, or something white, in the front yard if he were still welcome home. (1992:24-25). Endless variations upon the same story exist -in the Italian language, too2019-. It is easy to detect human mind's favorites: the choice that entails suffering; the hero's journey; the great reunion; the reconciliation/new beginning motif; the prodigal son motif etc.
2017
1979:65ss. Again, myths, legends and pseudo-witness accounts present many variations. 2019 Some tend to identify the ribbon as a U.S phenomenon. The present writer had read different stories in Italian using the same concept, which turns out so cross-culturally effective precisely because – as this writing contends- it provokes human psyche's innermost proclivities. 2018
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Readers or listeners freeze aghast:”These are static emotions that arrest the mind and cleanse it of the mere temporal interests of fear and desire.”. That's the aesthetic arrest the dramatic mode (=the audience is excluded from the scene as mere witness) brings about.
Is this entire ribbon imagery an invention of recent decades, perchance? Of course not. Rag-bushes/trees, bushes or similar onto which rags or pieces of cloth were pinned- were often associated with pin-wells -throwing a coin in a well, spring or equivalent- with both votive and commemorative purposes across cultures such as India, Syria, Buddhist Tibet, Ceylon, Celtic Britain, and the Graeco-Roman world; even in contemporary Italy, amused tourists throw coins in noted fontane hoping for good luck. Malevolent step-brothers throw Joseph the Hebrew patriarch into a pit (cistern, Genesis 37:24), which in the Quran (12:19) becomes a well. Commemoration and topography prove circularly to be irresistible.
So many ribbons are nowadays used to parade commitment to various causes: breast cancer (pink), HIV (red), online freedom of speech (blue), domestic violence (purple), etc. The same motif recurred during the French revolution, in whose beginning future politician Camille Desmoulins had used tree leaves to incite great French patriots to identify themselves, or the origins of the French cocarde:
Le 12 juillet 1789, dans l'après-midi, on apprit à Paris que Necker venait d'être congédié. La nouvelle de cet événement produisit la plus grande fermentation. Les Parisiens criaient que tout était perdu, puisque ce ministre n'était plus à la tête des affaires publiques. Desmoulins, qui avait ses instructions secrètes, profite habilement de 1588
cette disposition des esprits : il sort d'un café, tenant un pistolet à la main, et une épée de l'autre, monte sur une chaise et annonce la nouvelle, puis arrachant une feuille d'arbre, il l'attache à son chapeau en guise de cocarde, crie aux armes ! et invite les rassemblements à le suivre. Aussitôt, tous se précipitent à grands flots; en un instant le Palais royal et les quartiers voisins se couvrent d'une foule immense, les habitants de Paris descendent de tous les étages de leurs maisons, la population entière de la capitale semble être dans les rues. Il est difficile d'imaginer un mouvement pareil ; les spectacles allaient commencer, Camille Desmoulins et ses amis en forcent les entrées, en criant aux armes ! (Michaud 1814:214). As it happens in suchlike cases, the myth had become fact: how could it be otherwise? A number of people in disparate places and circumstances claim to have been part of the actual event -or to have learnt about it from sources above reproach-, much as others claim to have seen the elusive crucified Canadian, and the precious bayoneted babies:”Clearly, what sociologists have called "diving rumors"--rumors which keep reappearing through history with the same themes and rumor cores--are folklore.”2020.
Here people elatedly raise their hands to testify how they indeed saw the lady who gave her eyeball to her child; there people have seen with their very own eyes a spaceship that landed with the nephilim2021 or anunnaki2022 at the helm, just as the famous story goes:”Contaste-mo tu, ou terei sonhado que o contavas? [Did you tell me that for real, or was it in a dream that you told me about that?]”.
Traditional religious literature presents ambiguous verses that look straight out of a Star Trek episode:”And the Lord [=Jesus] screamed out, saying: 'My 2020
Bird 1979:67 In Hebrew lore, the offspring of the “sons of god” and “daughters of men”. 2022 Sumerian gods. 2021
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power, O power, you have forsaken me.' And having said this, he was taken up. ” 2023. Christian preachers such as Zach Drew link verses such as “In mounting terror, [Jacob] cried out, "How scary this place is! This is nothing less than God's house and the gateway to heaven!"”2024 to weird Star Trek scenarios of angels beaming through stargates or wormholes: “beam me up Jehovah” (R.M. Price).
“Battlestar Galactica,” in essence, was Mormons in space. Glen Larson, himself a Latter-day Saint, had infused his series mythology with too many Mormon references to ignore. His Twelve Colonies of Man were essentially the Lost Tribes of Israel whose history began at Kobol, an obvious anagram for Kolob, which, in Mormon theology, is the star nearest to the throne of God. The colonies were led by a "Quorum of 12," and marriages were referred to as “sealings” that extended beyond mortality and “through all the eternities.” (Bennett 2014:no page). In 1978 a red panda – a rare animal unlike any one might think ofescaped from a Dutch zoo. Hoping to enlist the public in order to rescue the valuable specimen, the zoo alerted the media. Just as the story aired, the panda was found dead. This notwithstanding, over 100 panda sightings were reported in the following days.
Orson Welles' phony 1938 radio broadcast about a Martian invasion triggered panic reactions in over 1 million people 2025. In an attempt to resist the invasion, a valiant 76 year-old even shot a neighboring water tower he saw as a Martian war machine2026. Gospel Of Peter, R. Brown translation, verse 19. Genesis 28:17. 2025 “This would mean that about 1,700,000 heard the broadcast as a news bulletin and that about 1,200,000 were excited by it.” (Cantril 1940:58). 2026 Franz no date:lecture 4. 2023 2024
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Many so-called eye-witnesses reported seeing the advancing Martian armies; others saw blazing death ray guns; many witnessed an all-time favorite:
We got into the car and listened some more. Suddenly, the announcer was gassed, the station went dead so we tried another' station but nothing would come on. -...- [another witness reported in the aftermath of the 1938 hoax] We had heard that Princeton was wiped out and gas was spreading over New Jersey and fire -...- All I could think of was being burned alive or being gassed. -...- [another person]"I knew it was some Germans trying to gas all of us. When the announcer kept calling them people from Mars I just thought he was ignorant and didn't know yet that Hitler had sent them all."(cit. in Cantril 1940:48,51-2,100 emphasis added). During a 1983 Congressional Medal of Honor ceremony Reagan told a story about military heroism that New York Daily News columnist Lars-Erik Nelson wrote never happened. Nelson had checked the citations on all 434 Congressional Medals of Honor awarded during WWII. The scene Reagan described did appear, however, in the 1944 film A Wing and a Prayer. [ Presidential spokesman] Larry Speakes’ response? “If you tell the same story five times, it’s true.” (Douglas 2007: no page)2027. All the neighbors were filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. ( Luke 1:65). Once you ’ ve sufficiently affected the beliefs of a couple of generations of parents, persuasion is no longer necessary, because your message has moved from idea to what is now believed to be fact. (Lakhani 2008:6). What [this] -...- narrative demonstrates is one of the more fascinating aspects of these belief narratives: the mixture of information, often distributed by the media, and speculation. This issue of the combination of information and speculation within urban legends is particularly relevant (Koven 2008:85). 2027
For a good analysis of the episode, see http://www.snopes.com/glurge/military/ridedown.asp. Brown (2013: A Model For Successful Influence) summarizes thus borrowing a Chinese story: three people make a tiger. What matters here is to emphasize how this bizarre logic applies at all times, and not only to the 'wrong' party or 'bad' idea.
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Isn't this a fitting comeback for miasma, that accursed agent of ritual pollution that obsessed ancient Greeks? Merriam-Webster dictionary defines
miasma as:”a vaporous exhalation formerly believed to cause disease.”:
Meanwhile, the [UK early XIX century] medical profession was in disarray, split between ‘contagionists’ and ‘anti-contagionists’, who could not agree whether transmission was the result of intimate contact with victims or exposure to ‘miasma’ (air somehow rendered poisonous). Londoners, their nerves quite frayed, veered between ‘fatuous contempt’ and ‘extravagant terror’.Gallows humour was the order of the day. George Cruikshank's publishers sold his latest collection of cartoons as ‘A New and Certain Antidote to the Cholera Morbus’, parodying the sales pitch of purveyors of quack nostrums, already much in evidence. (Jackson 2014:68). But killing enemies by exploiting the lethal forces of nature was not just mythical fantasy. I have gathered accounts from more than fifty authors in the ancient world, along with numerous archaeological finds, to provide evidence that biological and chemical weapons saw action in historical battles—in Europe and the Mediterranean, North Africa, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, the Asian steppes, India, and China. Among the historical victims and perpetrators of biochemical warfare were such prominent figures as Hannibal, Julius Caesar, and Alexander the Great. -...-Greek historians, from the fifth century BC through the second century AD, document many examples of warfare waged by biological and chemical means, as do Latin accounts beginning with the foundation of Rome and continuing through the late Roman Empire of the sixth century AD. Meanwhile, in China and India, weapons of poison and combustible chemicals were described in military and medical treatises from about 500 BC onward. The story continues with the development of Greek Fire and other incendiaries described in Byzantine and Islamic sources of late antiquity,from the seventh through fourteenth centuries AD. -...-Cyborg rats wired to deliver explosives? Sea lions as sentinels or assassins? Bees enlisted to detect the presence of enemies and chemical agents? Even these sophisticated biological operations have ancient antecedents. Live insects and animals have been drafted for war for thousands of years: wasps’ nests were lobbed over walls, vipers were catapulted onto ships, and scorpion bombs were hurled at besiegers. A veritable menagerie of creatures—from 1592
mice and elephants to flaming pigs— became allies on the battlefields of antiquity. Generals even devised ways for animals to deliver combustibles and figured out how to exploit inter-species hostilities. How about poison gas, flamethrowers, and incendiary bombs? Propelling fire and creating toxic fumes have a venerable history, too. Flaming arrows were only the beginning. The Assyrians tossed firebombs of oil, and during the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans created poison gas and a flameblowing machine to defeat fortified positions. Recipes for toxic smoke were secret weapons in ancient China and India, and asphyxiating gases suffocated many a tunneler in Roman-era sieges. Meanwhile, catapults shot firebolts fueled by sulphur. In the time of Alexander the Great, fire ships laden with burning chemicals destroyed navies, and foot soldiers were incinerated by incendiary shrapnel in the form of red-hot sand. -...- When the Spartans ignited the great woodpile at Plataia, the combination of pitch and sulphur “produced such a conflagration as had never been seen before, greater than any fire produced by human agency,� declared Thucydides. Indeed, the blue sulphur flames and the acrid stench must have been sensational, and the fumes also would have been quite destructive, since the combustion of sulphur creates toxic sulphur dioxide gas, which can kill if inhaled in large enough quantities. The Plataians abandoned their posts on the burning palisades.(Mayor 2009:28-9,148). Malanga often tailors his mythologies detailing space alien interferences to the topic at hand; if the discussion keeps to archeology and ancient history, his alien foes are the nephilim/ anunnaki / watchers of ancient myth; if the discussion is about the nature of the devil, his extraterrestrial foes become devils to the delight of mythicists and fringe enthusiasts.
Jordan Maxwell does much the same: the archetypal cosmic battle for mankind's soul (literally) no longer features Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, but competing races of outer space creatures. Flying saucers, gamma ray guns, stargates etc replace the pillars of fire and smoke, chariots and bronze daggers of the Old
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Testament...
Also, Maxwell (and others) restyle the U.S diffidence towards Catholicism and Communism in terms of a pyramid, whose capstone is the Vatican, and whose cornerstones are represented by a web of financial, political and Masonic cabals outer space beings direct by proxy. As many claim Maxwell was a Jehovah’s Witness in his youth, biographical inertia might explain his anti-Catholic ramblings.
Can the influence of mythology reach beyond television personalities?
In dubio pro reo: when in doubt, decide in the defendant's favor. This maxim is common currency in judicial culture all over the world. While legal scholars may give all sorts of explanations about the origin of this custom, perhaps credited to 'progressive' philanthropists, whose gums bled for humankind, its first sequential application runs back to the mythical times in which Athena, the goddess of wisdom and justice, established and presided a tribunal in Athens to judge no less than Ares, the god of war (Areopagus).
Myths says that Athena, every time the judges were evenly split and couldn't reach a verdict, cast her vote in the defendant's favor (=be wary of rash judgments, and of choices that might entail suffering). Athena also cast her vote in favor of Orestes who -in the myth- had killed his mother, in turn guilty of having killed her husband Agamemnon who -in turn again- had sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia2028 in order to be allowed to sail towards Troy. 2028
In Euripides' Iphigenia In Aulis, Artemis -just like the Hebrew binding of Isaac narrative- replaces Iphigenia with a deer at the last moment on the sacrificial altar. Some, however, consider this happy ending spurious. In
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Many of the longest lived stories (which depict situations) derive their popularity from the uncanny ability to trigger some neuralgic points in the human psyche. The 'contamination' motif was meant to ignite suspicion about what is otherwise believed to be familiar and commonplace, for example.
Most probably, this constitutes the 'culturally hijacked' and 'socially amplified' equivalent of an in-born evolutionary trait called neophobia (=fear of what is new or unknown) meant to shelter humans from potentially hazardous, unusual circumstances, and potentially poisonous, unusual foods etc.
Contamination is at the very heart of ancient myths: one of the archsinners was Tantalus, condemned to eternal torment because he had tried to feed his son Pelops to the gods; Prometheus incurred Zeus' wrath for tricking him into accepting the inedible/worthless fat as sacrifice (or the gods' ritual meal).
Some WWI scares were destined to be long lived and -for a long time- to be incorporated in the liturgy of commonly received credo, such as the “corpse factory� one, whereby Germans were said to recycle the enemy corpses milled on a grand scale to produce soap or other common items.
Unpopular or hated regimes or troops are invariably associated with the breaking of quintessential taboos such as that of cannibalism. Popular crusades, too, were rumored to have consisted in swarms of unwashed Christian cannibals
this version, Iphigenia is a willing sacrificial victim, too.
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terrorizing meek Muslims in the Middle East:”les Tafurs éprouvés par la famine viennent trouver Pierre l'Ermite devenu leur conseiller spirituel. Celui-ci leur suggère de manger les Turcs tués au combat épars dans les prés, après les avoir fait cuire et saler. ”2029.
The honored tradition fueled scares throughout the hectic end of the XVIII century:
Still deeper into one's heart goes that Tannery at Meudon; not mentioned among the other miracles of tanning! 'At Meudon,' says Montgaillard with considerable calmness, 'there was a Tannery of Human Skins; such of the Guillotined as seemed worth flaying: of which perfectly good wash−leather was made:' for breeches, and other uses. The skin of the men, he remarks, was superior in toughness (consistance) and quality to shamoy; that of women was good for almost nothing, being so soft in texture! (Montgaillard, iv. 290.)− −History looking back over Cannibalism, through Purchas's Pilgrims and all early and late Records, will perhaps find no terrestrial Cannibalism of a sort on the whole so detestable. It is a manufactured, soft−feeling, quietly elegant sort; a sort perfide! Alas then, is man's civilisation only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever? Nature still makes him; and has an Infernal in her as well as a Celestial. (Carlyle 1837: no page). In Robespierre's private war against LaFayette, he ofen used wild exaggeration. He inflated the Champ de Mars casualties to 1,500 and repeated atrocity stories of children in Brabant being slaughtered in their mother's wombs by LaFayette's soldiers and carried on the ends of bayonets. (Jordan 1985:89). The land itself has a long, unhappy history with Chinese people. During the late nineteenth century, mining and logging operations in California were often undertaken with Chinese laborers, who were badly exploited. The land, then, was a logging camp, and the surrounding land, including neighboring Forest of Nisene Marks, was heavily logged during that time. Chinese laborers were brought from 2029
Rouche 1981:33.
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China, supposedly to work for six months and then return with their pay. They worked, but instead of being paid at the end, they were given the task of digging a large trench, and then shot and killed. At that time, it was not illegal in Santa Cruz County to kill a Chinese person. (Dharma-Aloka 1999: no page). a lynching holocaust murdered thousands of black men for allegedly imagining sex with white women (Morone 2003:260). There is a bottomless corpus of urban legends detailing cases of food contamination, whereby the mindless public is fed say dog or cat meat instead of rabbit or veal:
Mina and Jeffrey were only two of hundreds of students who participated in this experiment. But their reaction was typical: without foreknowledge about the vinegar, most of them chose the vinegary MIT Brew. But when they knew in advance that the MIT Brew had been laced with balsamic vinegar, their reaction was completely different. At the first taste of the adulterated suds, they wrinkled their noses and requested the standard beer instead. The moral, as you might expect, is that if you tell people up front that something might be distasteful, the odds are good that they will end up agreeing with you—not because their experience tells them so but because of their expectations. (Ariely 2009:93-94). In early 2013 a new contamination scare hits Europe. It appears horse meat was surreptitiously added to the stuffing of lasagne, ragÚ or other such products.
While some top-shelf food companies may have violated provisions
regarding truthful labeling of products, details soon piled on.
Horse meat may allegedly have come from slaughtered horses from Italian hippodromes the ongoing crisis had forced to close down; or from foreign countries with lax regulations, thus resurrecting the specter of meat laced with 1597
doping
chemicals.
Quite
(un)surprisingly,
some
supermarket
chains
had
mysteriously stopped carrying that kind of product -as the present writer verifiedweeks ahead of the 'accidental' discovery: readers shall come to their own conclusions.
Alternatively, a noted furniture shopping mall discontinued chocolate cakes from its cafeterias in 23 countries after Chinese authorities denounced such products had been found positive to faecal bacteria 2030. According to Italian CIA, 45% of people in Italy stops buying products media scares denounce as contaminated: a 10% drop in the industry segment sales ensues2031.
Severed human fingers might assertedly be found in fast-food burgers, or Halloween treats may contain poison or razor blades. In many cases, urban legends2032, the reports of hoaxers and unsavory characters, and the script of this or that horror/action movie2033 read much alike; it is entirely possible that mythomaniacs serve as transmission belt when it comes to these rumors.
Alimenti 2013: no page. Carne Cavallo 2013: no page. 2032 Roberge 2009. 2033 One urban legend tells of a babysitter who keeps receiving threatening calls from a murderous maniac. At some point she calls the police only to learn the frightening calls come from within the house. She runs outdoors asking for help and later learns the maniac had already killed the children in her custody. Another tells of this kind couple who rescues this frightened child on the road, who claims a maniac just killed his/her parents. The couple is taking the child to the police, when the driver suddenly realizes his wife has her throat cut and the child is licking a bloody razor on the back seat. Readers be the judge over whether this constitutes playing with atavistic fears and employing Greek tragedy tricks, or typical cable TV story-lines. “details that would be familiar to anyone who has ever baby-sat—a strange house, a television show, an unexpected phone call, frightening sounds or threats, the abrupt orders from the operator, and finally the shocking realization at the end that (as in “The Killer in the Backseat”) the caller had been there in the house (or behind her) all the time. The technical problems of calling another telephone from an extension of the same number, or the actual procedures of call-tracing, do not seem to worry the storytellers.”(Brunvand 1981:39). 2030 2031
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Best and Horiuchi write that
The 1970s witnessed the discovery of a frightening new deviant - the Halloween sadist, who gave dangerous, adulterated treats to children -...- Various authorities responded to the threat: legislatures in California (1971) and New Jersey (1982) passed laws against Halloween sadism; schools trained children to inspect their treats for signs of tampering; and some communities tried to ban trick-ortreating -...-. the 76 reported cases were generally not serious. Injuries were reported in only 20 cases, and only two of these involved deaths -...- both boys' deaths were caused by family members, rather than by anonymous sadists.(1985:488-491). As readers may see, myth develop around a modest kernel of truth embellished and tampered with over time, often for petty or 'political' reasons. Various mythical characters (Tantalus, Atreus etc) get involved into barbarous acts of murder with the purpose of cannibalism.
Central-African dictator Bokassa (1966-79) was accused of not only indulging cannibal feasts, but to have served such polluting food to visiting foreign dignitaries. Another African dictator, Uganda's General Amin, tackled the same accusation in an interview thus:�I don't like human flesh. It's too salty for me�2034; he was also accused of keeping human heads severed from his foes in his fridge: the ungodly pantry2035.
Around 1839, Mormon founder Smith, along with confederates, was arrested in Missouri. Mormon lore -which some regard as authentic, and others criticize as spurious- recounts how impious jailers had wanted to serve Smith 2034 2035
Cit. in The New York Times, August 21, 2003. Cit. by Ugandan News site Daily Monitor, May 4, 2014.
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human flesh (the so-called “Mormon beef�) from his fallen brethren, which Smith refused to partake out of divine premonition.
In 1986 The Golden Child, the fellow in captivity (an original plot contrivance, indeed) is neither a galactic princess, nor a religious prophet, nor an American prisoner of war in Communist Vietnam, but a child-saint. The devil himself and his cronies try to undermine his holiness by making only polluting food available to him.
Even some versions of Red Riding Hood contain the same motif, which in turn may be allegorically read in terms of generational interchange, sexual metaphors within the realm of the social proper and so forth:
Numerous variants of The Grandmother's Tale were collected by French folklorists in the 19th and 20th centuries in the Loire basin, the Nivernais, the Forez, the Velay, the northern Alps, and the Italian Tyrol. Italo Calvino published a version from Abruzzo in his collection Italian Folktales (1956). Called The False Grandmother, in this story a hungry ogress takes the place of the wolf - but in other respects, the story is quite similar to the French folktale. Just as in the French story, the girl is offered a grisly meal — beans (really teeth) boiled in a pot and fitters (really ears) in a frying pan; and she, too, escapes by feigning the need to relieve herself outside. Calvino had doubts that The False Grandmother actually came from the Italian oral tradition, suggesting it may have derived instead from published versions by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. Yet the Abruzzo tale contains elements that link it clearly to the older folk tradition: the cannibal meal, the toilet ruse, the heroine who plots her own escape... all things that disappeared as the tale moved from oral transmission to print. (Windling 2004: no page). As -in one of the many versions- Red Riding Hood is first eating her grandmother's flesh, then drinking her blood (presented to her as wine), first a cat, 1600
then a bird2036 try to forewarn2037 her but in vain2038. The animal -a proxy for the innate wisdom of nature, in turn an allegory for the conscience- can also be slain, just as Pinocchio kills the talking cricket with a mallet:
After the earthquake there was a fire. But the LORD wasn't in the fire. And after the fire there was a quiet, whispering voice. ( 1 Kings 19:12) Prophets of doom circularly issue their warning nobody heeds, which makes Smith's case all the more special: unlike Red Riding Hood, the godly Mormon prophet avoids the transgression as he heeds divine advice.
Popular culture is never far behind. In 1987 Lost Boys, young vampires try to induct a teenager into their clique. They tamper with his sensory impressions as he mistakes spaghetti for worms, and so forth. He's finally drinking blood, which he thinks to be wine2039 as the preceding trick played on him confounded his senses.
A camper-trailer owner has converted his spare gas tank into a holding tank for the camper toilet [in a urban legend]. One morning he comes out and finds a siphon hose on the ground next to the vehicle, and alongside it is clear evidence that some wouldbe gasoline thief has been very, very sick. (Brunvand 1981:101). Even young Jason (No Retreat No Surrender) tries to forewarn the three karate champions from Seattle about how dangerous their Russian foe actually is: 2036
“The animals associated with Mars are the wolf and the woodpecker. In one version of the Romulus and Remus myth, a woodpecker called Picus also assisted the abandoned twins.” (Meineck 2005-1:36). 2037 A vulture warns Rama that the demon Ravana has abducted Sita. 2038 “In the Jaina Kathakosa (Treasury of Stories), a work of perhaps the fifteenth century although relating much older contents, we find the story of Madanakumâra, who is taken with, abducts, and plans to marry a woman, Jayasundarî, who is also strongly attracted to him. At the last minute, their true relationship as mother and son is revealed (by a pair of talking parrots, one of whom was Madanakumâra’s brother in a previous life), the marriage is cancelled, and both become Jaina renunciants” (Silk 2009:178). 2039 The stale connection between blood and wine.
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they make fun of him, then are defeated straightaway. Kickboxer, Bloodsport, Ip
Man, Rocky, and a host of other movies, similarly present the scene of the prophet of doom, whose advice goes unheeded with dire results.
Some talk about metaphors of incorporation:
from the most metaphorical and sublime to the most literal and. if not always ridiculous. frequently gothic and grotesque. Between these two extremes lies a range of images which indicate the different degrees of relation possible between the poles of inside and outside that are discovered to be the basis of other binary terms. such as self and other. mind and body. literal and metaphorical. textual body and its content. (Kilgour 1986:1). The obsession with metaphors of incorporation is evergreen. Oriental goddess Au Co is stranded on Earth2040 after tasting the Earth's soil against her sisters' advice; Proserpina eats pomegranate seeds while in the nether world, and is thus obliged to spend at least part of the year there. In Buddhist Agganna Sutta, divine beings (Abbhasaras) start losing their status after eating mud; later still, the habit of eating rice turns them into humans (=emergence myth).
To a lesser extent, several societies or tribes the world over 2041 enforce the taboo of not touching the earth under prescribed circumstances; the same prohibition recurs in various Celtic tales. As Meineck suggests 2042, Greek religiosity pivoted around a triangle: the gods represented the top, family and eating the bottom. It is thus not surprising to find so many myths axing around (im)proper 2040 2041 2042
Another rendition of the godly savior-founder leaving heaven behind to herald a new beginning on Earth. Cfr Frazer 1913. 2005: Religion And Society.
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eating or drinking (zombies, vampires, satanic masses etc), and -by extensioncontamination.
Considered the ruthless, foul though alluring inverted doppelgaenger of the loving, nurturing mother goddess (in her various incarnations), the lore of Dakinis (female spirits) transited from Hinduism to Buddhism, whereby Dakinis -roughly comparable to medieval Europe's incubi and succubi- indulge their bottomless appetites gorging themselves on wine and meat, the commonplace ersatz of blood and flesh. As this writing hypothesizes, the arch-transgressor can in fact be(come) the best among us, so Buddhist Saint Padma Sambhava originally studied under the Dakinis, now purveyors of spiritual truth.
Stories revolving around 'contamination' can either be calmly relayed as another urban legend based on the atavistic fears of the human mind wrapped in a fool's joke:
Les rumeurs au sujet des animaux exotiques ou domestiques ne finiront jamais d'étonner. -...- Les anecdotes concernant des animaux se multiplient comme celle relatant l'incroyable méprise quant à ce petit rat affectueux ramené du Mexique par des vacanciers québécois qui l'avaient confondu avec un chihuahua (Roberge 2009:46). Or it all may become explosive altruism in the hands of distressed, electioneering scholars with a hornet in their (red?) bonnet:
De nos jours, l'expression sans fard des préjugés choque et classe comme extrémiste. -...- Dans certains récits, l'hostilité est déguisée : ce sont ceux où le méchant étranger est représenté de façon 1603
métaphorique par un animal répugnant tapi dans des marchandises d'importation. -...- Dans d'autres récits, la menace grandit et de vilaines créatures étrangères contaminent le corps ou la maison (Campion-Vincent 1995:122). People use a whole class of reference-point substitutes when they don’t have valid reference information for a particular attribute. -...-For this reason, people often use external signals as reference points. -...-Customers who used larger plates served themselves 52% more food and ate 45% more food than customers who used smaller plates.(Hamilton 2016:175). In a context of increased fear of crime in which the poor are often associated with criminality, the upper classes fear contact and contamination, but they continue to depend on their servants. -...- to relate security exclusively to crime is to fail to recognize all the meanings it is acquiring in various types of environments (writing about Sao Paulo, Caldeira in Low 1999:90). 'sanitation syndrome' -...- as a general social metaphor for the pollution by blacks of urban space. -...-[leading to] ‘warehousing’ the racially marginalized; -...- no less than ‘Negro removal’. (Goldberg in Cross&Keith 1993:49) Contamination needs not to be strictly related to metaphors of incorporation. Earth itself can be a contaminating agent: the mythology of the foot.
The foot is the absolute and unmitigated testimonial to our degraded animality, to the incongruity between our proud, rich, lively, infinitely transcendent, free inner spirit and our earthbound body. (Becker 1973:237). In these men, given the spiritual soaring, oftentimes a wound appears on the finger or the foot: at one of the extremities because he is far out (Bly 1986)2043. Roman brides were carried across the house's threshold 2044 in fear of
2043
Jesus has his extremities nailed to the crossroad of life. Oedipus, Philoctetes, Ajase, The Grail King, Tristan have “stinky wounds”. 2044 Others contend this ritual celebrates the rape of the Sabin women instead.
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offending the virgin goddess Vesta, who presided over the hearth, and whom the bride represented as keeper of the family shrine; more or less the same applied to brides in traditional, Imperial China. Brides among the Black Ju people of the Kalahari had to be carried to their nuptial hut as well, for contact with the soil could prove inauspicious, and make them thin2045.
The mythology of the contact with the impure earth is limitless. What about the knight/gentleman using his jacket so that the lady's feet could avoid a puddle:
According to other versions, the young man was watching [Buddha of the remote past] Dipankara approach in a religious procession when he realized that a mud puddle lay in Dipankara's path. The young man [Gautama Buddha in a previous life] quickly unfastened his long hair and spread it over the mud puddle so that Diparikara's feet would not be soiled. (Hirakawa 1990:265). This sound so similar to what assertedly happened to Jesus:
When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. (Luke 7:37-8). Just as this writing contends, endless variations may be applied to the same story. Respected luminary of the new age/oriental wisdom movement, Kornfield 2046 relates the Dipankara anecdote claiming that Gautama threw his entire body across the puddle. 2045
This pre-scientific hunting-gathering culture may have grasped through experimental wisdom what modern research shows: higher levels of body fat seem to quicken puberty's onset, hence the ability to reproduce. 2046 2005: part 7.
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In Hindu mythology the foot is symbol of mortality, loss, oppression (the untouchable labourers are born from the god's feet) etc. Unwritten rules dictate(d) feminine feet ought to be small. Crippling Chinese foot-binding practices, and our day's ladies shoes all tend to make ladies' feet (look) more diminutive.
Again, what is foul can also be purveyor of holiness. Here is about the mystical contemplation of Shiva's lotus feet, yet there the lotus feet are Buddha's (or Rama's, or Chandragupta's, or Krishna's, or Kali's, or Sai Baba's; or Jesus' 2047...). At the Eyup Sultan mosque in Istanbul, Mohamed's footprint can be observed.
In Brianza (Italy), once upon a time it was believed that touching a clergyman's feet during a storm might scare devils away, thus propitiating good weather. Again in Brianza, well into the XX century San Giobbe -or the transfiguration of Old Testament Job- was the protector of silkworms -and related lucrative industry for local peasants-: from Giobbe's infested wounds silkworms would have come about.
Myths and topographies may overlap. Adam's peak in Sri Lanka is home to a godly footprint dear to Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Christian pilgrims alike: Buddha's, Thomas', Shiva's or Adam's depending on who's telling the story. Buddha's footprint is also found at Wat Phra Phuttabhat (Lopburi, Thailand).
2047
In the Santa Maria In Palmis church at Rome, Jesus's presumed footprints are visible. St. Peter would have collected them as Jesus appeared to him in Rome (the Quo Vadis Domine episode of apocryphal literature). Jesus' footprint would in reality be a pagan ex-voto dedicated to a Roman god. During Easter celebrations, both Orthodox and Catholic Christians approach a cross to kiss Jesus' feet.
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Before climbing to the mountaintop at Adam's peak, pilgrims purify themselves in running water (=the water mytheme again). In Taiwan, shrines of Tudi Gong (Earth god) rest typically atop hills, beneath trees, and close to rivers and/or trails. In Bali, the Tirtha Empul spring is considered a source of immortality, just as Hindu god Indra had intended when he created the spring to benefit his dying soldiers an enemy had poisoned.
Various caves are the place where sages and Saints left their footprints (Padma Sambhava's footprint at Chiu monastery; Naropa's footprint in a block of quartz, for example), which of course recurred in prehistoric cave art as well.
At Batu Maung (Malaysia), a temple serves as abode for the footprint of another superlative figure: Chinese admiral Zheng He.
As will be discussed later, many sacred stones located around the world appear to have the footprints of royal or sainted persons in them, or footprints of supernatural beings such as faeries and rockand water-babies. The human footprint motif is common in American Indian rock art. A site in Colbert County, Alabama contains carvings of four- and six-toed feet, serpents, and meandering lines. (Varner 2004:46). Putting (metaphorically or concretely) one's foot over another's head is a symbol of extreme deference and submission:
Behaviour that usually results in pollution is sometimes intentional in order to show deference and respect; by doing that which under other circumstances would be defiling, an individual expresses his inferior position (Harper in Douglas 1966:9)
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Readers may see that the 'customization' element may vary according to the priorities, circumstances and bias of the 'embellisher'. That happens at all levels: hoaxes manufactured by powerful lobbies; a man who shuffled papers in the army, but tells his grandchildren what a hero he was; people online getting into all sorts of extortionate claims about their income, looks, connections, sex appeal, status and property:
Always already under a kind of erasure, the past becomes an evacuated space ready to be filled with wonders, ghosts, and other signs of the counterfactual and pathological -...-. An understanding of pathological alterity as the proper goal of cultural history comes, as I have suggested, only at the cost of being unavoidably implicated in the imprecise movements of invitation and interdiction with respect to the historical object. (Uebel 2002:48). The circumstances and biases of the target audience shall be taken into account as well. Kramer2048 mentions Senator Kennedy's (an archetypal liberal) speech to Christians at very conservative Liberty University. Kramer emphasizes how successful Kennedy's speech was, starting with about 30 minutes of building common ground (=emphasizing commonalities and building intellectual bridges). As Kennedy proceeded to let the cat out of his politician's bag (= he's on the left after all), Kramer emphasizes the audience was still clapping hands at concepts Kramer is sure went against their Christian, conservative background. As Boothman 2049 would have it, “people one likes can do no wrong�.
Elementary ideas and exempla 2048 2049
No date: Tools Pathos. 2004.
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tend to sell well irrespective of
situational factors. Homeland first gobbledygook works irrespective of the regime at hand being a Communist, Fascist or military dictatorship; or a vanilla western massdemocracy. Christ-figures sell well before one makes choices regarding which sort of Christ is at hand: black, white or red; a meek fakir, a lusty rabbi planting offspring here and there, a dying and rising mystery cult godhead, an affluence monger, or a rabid Che Guevara figure.
Instructions to religious preachers already included from time immemorial a series of rules and attitudes to get on their audience's good side by building common ground and using 'stick and carrot' tactics (mixing compliments and recognition with oblique critiques, and the sharp indictment of generic categories of sin):
Pathos entails the speaker carefully considering and appealing to the emotions of the listeners and Ethos requires the speaker to use good moral character for ethical ends and demonstrate good will and concern for the audience. While the premises of most of Aesop's fables were based in an effort to improve the thinking or conduct of the audience, the ones at Delphi seemed entirely an attempt to infuriate and condemn them. Because of Aesop's disregard for the principles of good argument, Aesop's persuasive efforts triggered a boomerang effect, yielding his own death. (Bonniksen 2006:17). The animal or human (whether individual or collective) culprits (the 'Halloween sadist', 'scheming cabal', etc) date farther back into immemorial time with the enemy (the contaminating/contaminated agent) representing the quintessential trickster of the myth eventually adapted to whichever actual (tricky) situation:
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Trickster is eternally scavenging for food, exhibiting an unbelievable appetite that places him in precarious situations. Trickster has childlike qualities, but in other narratives, he is also the father of the people and a potent conductor of spiritual forces in the form of sacred dreams. He represents the basest instincts, but attacks situations with cunning. -...- Trickster plays tricks and is the victim of tricks. The trickery of such stories extends as well to symbolic play regarding cultural forms, rules, and worldview. -...- self-absorption, and love of mischief--cruel and vividly silly--make him both unpredictable and potentially dangerous. At the opposite end of the spectrum, his endless foolishness catches him in one disastrous trap after another, making him a laughingstock before all, humans and deities. (Hempel 2004:34). Promethian myths and the rival, blunderer genus diverge mainly through their rival uses, as vehicles of an ideal to be pursued or a past to be suppressed or overcome (Goodman 1993:58). The antics of the archetypal tricksters of myth (coyotes, spiders...) may very likely leave the modern reader unaffected, possibly elicit occasional laughter, and more often raise a few eyebrows. It is enough, however, to substitute -in an otherwise preserved story- this, that or another human group or individual to have conventional modern readers either on their seats, or panicking to put as much distance as possible between them and the 'impure' (insensitive, '...ist') jester.
For example, one such story requires a representative of the mainstream community to approach trickster and to taunt him in a patronizing or insulting way to mockingly extract from him the secret of his alleged ability (smarts, tricking people...). While the mainstream character is convinced to know better than trickster by all accounts, trickster (the oddball, the minority, the outcast...) manages to have him surrender his possessions (money, horses, clothes...) by promising to share (sell, fetch...) a secret item (whatever that happens to be) that the end of the 1610
story reveals to be either purely imaginary, or of no value.
Readers shall come to their own conclusions. The same rule is also exemplified by the many jokes gathering stereotypical representatives of many groups, orientations or nationalities with the intent of ridiculing some, and to make one among them look smarter. It turns out the story works as well irrespective of who gets the upper hand in the end.
Alternatively, tricksters can don the modern garb of quantum physics:
On a quantum level, dirt is as mysterious as anything else. It is replete with trickster-like electrons that defy causal determinism by suggesting that their behavior depends on how they are observed, among other things. The trickster was then surveyed and a case was made for the wisdom of the ancients, for the wisdom of the collective human psyche. In the trickster myth, so much material, rife with paradox, speaks to the issues of duality and non-duality. This material has been uncovered by quantum mechanics, ironically, through its deterministic method. The trickster myth engenders questions about boundaries, morality, amorality, space, time, heaven, earth, consciousness, societal disruption, and transformation. (Nagata 2012:64-5). Ramanuja anticipated Freud’s judgment on mysticism as merely a retrogressive attainment of the oceanic feeling of the womb, no advance but a retreat. He was even closer to modern brain physiologists who say nondual experiences are simply a function of an induced malfunction in the temporal parietal lobe of the brain, whereby the little gizmo that comes on line in infancy to differentiate self from others goes temporarily back offline. For Ramanuja, that’s all you’re doing. Once you snap out of it, a mountain’s just a mountain (Price 2008:114). The same tactics are not limited to fables or folklore. Eugenics proponent
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-and plagiarist2050-, H.G. Wells also wrote in 1917 posing as an “extreme pacifist “ who “did not want to write anything “under instruction””2051:
The German cultivation of opinion began long before the war; it is still the most systematic and, because of the psychological ineptitude of the Germans, it is probably the clumsiest. -...- Neither the English, the Russians, the Italians, nor the French, to name only the bigger European allies, are concerned in setting up a legend, as the Germans are concerned in setting up a legend of themselves to impose upon mankind. They are reality dealers in this war, and the Germans are effigy mongers. -...- And then over and above the great outrage of the war come these incessant mean-spirited atrocities. A great and simple wickedness it is possible to forgive; the war itself, had it been fought greatly by Austria and Germany, would have made no such deep and enduring breach as these silly, futile assassinations have done between the Austro-Germans and the rest of the civilised world. One great misdeed is a thing understandable and forgivable; what grows upon the consciousness of the world is the persuasion that here we fight not a national sin but a national insanity; that we dare not leave the German the power to attack other nations any more for ever.... (no page), emphasis added. Or consider H. G. Wells. More than any other figure, his literary escapism and faith in science as the salvation of man were seen as the preeminent antidotes to the disease of Western malaise. In the summer of 1932, Wells delivered a major speech at Oxford University to Britain's Young Liberals organization, in which he called for a "'Phoenix Rebirth' of Liberalism" under the banner of "Liberal Fascism." Fabian socialism had failed, he explained, because it hadn't grasped the need for a truly "revolutionary" effort aimed at the total transformation of society. His fellow Socialists understood the need for socialism, but they were just too nice about it. (Goldberg 2007:79-80). Readers may remark that the sulfuric prose suggests the 'complete
2050
While the case for Wells' plagiarism seems well supported, many forgiving authors simply suggest it all might have been “sheer coincidence” (Hughes 1966:85). Even eugenics is typically politely excised from Wells' dossier -as a token of appreciation for his 'patriotism' or germanophobia, perhaps-, or neutralized to mean absolutely nothing of interest except for the malevolent critic 'with an axe to grind'. 2051 Wells 1917:No page.
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neutralization for ever' of 'aggressive groups whose national trait is insanity, the habit of setting legends about themselves, and appetites for world dominance': the pamphleteers of the future totalitarian regimes could consider themselves wellschooled. The Thebes of ancient myths, the abode of everything ungodly, had found a suitable replacement.
Naturally, double standards apply to the apocalyptic, vengeful genre as well. When a middle-eastern cleric -founder of his country's then third largest political party- invoked the deity to “annihilate� his people's foes, a party's spokesperson brushed that aside: "Only an idiot could understand that the [cleric] intended harm to innocents."2052.
In the example at hand, a prudent person in polite company would first make sure to know who/what exactly is the article about before tooting the horn of moral indignation, only to find oneself cast out and/or ridiculed if 'this time the opposite applies':
A dramatic example of that double standard was illustrated in the "dart man" case in New York City. "Dart man" was a black man who went around Manhattan shooting blowgun darts into women's behinds. Although all of "dart man' s" two dozen plus victims were white (including two light-skinned hispanics), the New Daily News of 4 July 1990 reported that "authorities do not think race is a factor." Police are quoted as saying that they "have no reason to believe the attacks are racially motivated." However, in New York City's diverse racial mix the odds of picking two dozen white women at random are on the order of winning Lotto America! Imagine for a moment what the conclusion would have been if "dart man's" was white and all of 2052
Philps 2001: no page.
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his victims would have been black. Quite another story, isn't it? (Wilcox 1990:3). Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one the Lord sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys. ( 1 Samuel 15:1ss). It's the old story of the missing apple: a foe stole it, whereas the apple accidentally slipped in a friend's bag. When 'bad guys' are concerned, apocalyptic literature is interpreted literally as a ' secret master plan' for future onslaught that “only an idiot” could understand as allegorical and thus irrelevant.
Early Christian apocalyptic literature specifically mentioned:”I have come to set the world on fire, and I wish it were already burning! ” ( Luke 12:49)2053, whence Nero's (plausible) accusation against Christians to have set Rome on fire, in the broader scheme of a constellation of Hebrew sects preaching impending divine judgment, and active revolt against Rome's impious regime. (Some) Christians may also have lent support to accusations against them by being either overjoyed or supportive of Rome's arson, which -irrespective of the actual culprit- represented a sign of the end of days according to their doctrines.
It shall also be mentioned how fires -whether accidental or typically a sign of unrest- in such early megalopolises as Rome were recurring, with major ones 2053
Whether or not this particular gospel could be construed as circulating in its complete form in Nero's times is open to debate. What matters here is that this imagery was indeed present in early Christian thought.
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every few decades. Carlyle magisterially describes early XIX century Constantinople thus:
even Constantinople is not without its safety−valves; there too Discontent can vent itself,−−in material fire; by the number of nocturnal conflagrations, or of hanged bakers, the Reigning Power can read the signs of the times, and change course according to these (Carlyle 1837:no page). In another era, the Soviet league of militant atheists, a maximalist organization devoted to the eradication of religious practice, vowed -in another Zoroastrian nod- to put on fire all the churches of the world. Again, the cue this writing hopefully gives is not in the promotion or demotion of particular groups, orientations or otherwise, but in the emphasis placed on the role recurrently played by petrified mythologies, fossilized characters, obtuse allegories that work on the human mind's neuralgic points in the ultimate service of any cause.
The figure of the arch-trickster is also useful to decontaminate and 'clear' situations and strategies that are eminently ambiguous. The encroachment of adult eroticism upon the life of children – which Vargas Paterno 2054 discusses- is best policed through the image of the elusive -but omnipresent- pedophile lurking from under every stone left unturned. That's more conducive to the fusion of the horde than having to face the role mainstream masters of acceptable discourse, media and advertisement – hence we the public as voters, consumers etc- play in such dynamics:
2054
2011.
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College students in their underwear are tame compared to what’s now going on in high school. A 2008 survey found that a shocking 1 out of 4 teen girls has sent a nude or nearly nude picture of herself via the Internet or cell phone. These images, sometimes meant for one person, often end up circulating to hundreds of other teens. (Twenge&Campbell 2009:92-3). The erotization of the child's space to the advantage of consumerism easily co-exists with narratives of bayoneted babies, apocalyptic moralist pleas, scares about organized, outreaching pedophile rackets, and other sensationalized sentimental items.
Pencil-necked sweat-hogs gawking in front of the TV – reading a magazine...-
as
erotized
images
(=
Baudrillard's
“our
society's
sexual
hyperaesthesia”2055) of children and women go by can be construed as either doing it 'the right way' (whatever that really means=personality in order); or 'the wrong way' (whatever that really means, again= personality disorder) as perverts, freaks, potential sex maniacs, pedophiles:”More and more “interiors” (thoughts and feelings) - even vaginas – are promoted as “not normal.”
Meanwhile, on one end a friendly operator is ready to take their orders for whichever unrelated product was associated with the erotized imagery; on the other end, a watchdog group or analyst is monitoring and recording one's habit...there seemingly is a nice law, precedent or statute that might be (ab)used against one. 2055
In Baudrillard, the prefix hyper denotes an object, reality or situation -which follows the prefix hyper- brought to a level that greatly exceeds the object's (reality, situation...) native characteristics:”more human than human”. Baudrillard dissects the neuroses and schizogenic sides coterminous with Debord's society of spectacle on a curve towards depersonalization and postmodernity.
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Foreign policy or economic ambiguities and imbalances may be exorcised invoking an “axis of evil�, whose master puppeteers, evil doppelgaengers, change over time: Germany, Cuba, Japan, the USSR, Iran, Libya, Iraq, Venezuela, North Korea, Communist Vietnam... Jung wrote:
Today humanity, as never before, is split into two apparently irreconcilable halves. The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves. (1959:70-1). Based on a careful (or careless, depending on your perspective) study of the book of Revelation and other biblical books of prophecy, Lindsey wrote with assurance about what was about to transpire in the Middle East as the superpowers of the Soviet Union, China, the European Union, and finally the United States converged in a massive confrontation leading to an all-out nuclear holocaust, right before Jesus returned. All of this, we were told, had to happen before the end of the 1980s, as Scripture itself taught. It obviously never happened. (Ehrman 2011:120). What is important here are not preposterous nods to the perfunctory Cold War logic, but human psyche's psychotic fixation with the figure of the archtrickster, evil doppelgaenger or other terms that may be interchangeably used. Perhaps the Cold War -now droll, disused subject fit for antiquarians- and SwissGerman theorists of volatile sympathies are not one's cup of tea. The so-called 9-11 might offer a suitable substitute in the words of venerable Wuling (on May 8, 2002), a U.S-born Chinese Pure Land Buddhist monastic who now places 9-11 in the exact same frame of reference (the world is never going to be the same) Jung placed the Cold War.
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Foreign policy analysts may know that -since the late 1980s and all the more after the disappearance of the USSR- the West has been on the desperate, compulsive lookout for a suitable arch-trickster. It goes without saying, every archtrickster is considered the ultimate expression in the matter (“as never before�), and not as the next stage act in a circular operetta.
As the world of professional wrestling again shows, once an archtrickster disappears -such as evil Russian Nikolai Volkoff-, another one -Sargent Slaughter and his Iraqi paymasters- appears; Ric Flair's Four Horsemen 2056 (='bad guy' wrestlers making trouble everywhere) of yore ultimately found a new incarnation in Hulk Hogan's NWO, and Flair's own Evolution: it has to be.
Considered with reference to this binary coding of morality, it is evident that our episode of "All-Star Wrestling" consisted of a drama in three acts: ( 1 ) the preliminary triumph of virtue (first match). (2) the repeated triumphs of evil (matches two through five), and (3) the definitive triumph of virtue (the grand finale). Beyond this, however, there is another operative code that is both more subtle and more vicious: an ethnocentric and racist coding for "Americanism" and lack thereof. In order to recognize this second code, which remained always sub textual to the primary moral code, it is helpful to consider the four central matches in the program : the repeated triumphs of evil. -...-Given this, Freedman argued that the fascination wrestling exerts on its predominantly lower-class audience derives from its ability to present a convincing picture of the contradictions between the Horatio Alger ideology of upward mobility within a free market economy and lived experience, where hard work and ability are seldom adequately rewarded, whereas other methods-unscrupulous dealings, family connections, obsequiousness, flattery,and the like-are regularly keys to success. -...-An order twice inverted is an order restored, perhaps even strengthened as a result of the exercise. (Lincoln 1989:155,158). 2056
Nothing new under the sun. The shtick belabored upon virile friendship – A-Team, Riptide etc style- with all its stage acts and controversies.
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Man experiences this flow of time in the festive marketplace, in the carnival crowd, as he comes into contact with other bodies of varying age and social caste. He is aware of being a member of a continually growing and renewed people. This is why festive folk laughter presents an element of victory not only over supernatural awe, over the sacred, over death; it also means the defeat of power, of earthly kings, of the earthly upper classes, of all that oppresses and restricts (Bakhtin 1984:92). From the position of secular man (Homo sapiens), that is to say, we are to enter the play sphere of the festival, acquiescing in a game of belief, where fun, joy, and rapture rule in ascending series. The laws of life in time and space—economics, politics, and even morality— will thereupon dissolve. (Campbell 1960:28). He has transformed the typical, dull, technical, plodding slide show into a theatrical event complete with heroes, villains, a supporting cast, and stunning backdrops. People who witness a Steve Jobs presentation for the first time describe it as an extraordinary experience. (Gallo 2010:xii). Chronological time, whose every passing beat gets cast in a fixed record slipping gradually out of reach, loses in favor of duration, whereby the past never really passes.
(Not so ) metaphorically speaking it's still 1688, 1941, 1963, etc. In the Buddhist Mahayana tradition, refined spiritual attainment should allow the skilled practitioner to join Gautama Buddha as he delivers his famous sermons XXV centuries (or more) ago.
The item can also stew in pseudo-scientific jargon, whereby quantum physics -again- possibly -for Della Santina 2057: unquestionably- lends a veneer of support to the mystical realization that Buddha is -indeed and right now- preaching 2057
ME6102: lecture 8.
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at Deer Park or Vulture Peak, supercharged high places of Buddhist topography, thanks to some scientific relationship between multiple universes or something of that sort.
According to Robert Thurman, when great Tibetan Buddhist Saint Tsongkhapa presented a crown to a Gautama Buddha statue in Lhasa at the Jokhang Temple, he wanted to emphasize how Buddha was not a figure from a distant past, but “right there and then”.
Furthermore, countless Buddhas, in the eons before and after Gautama, shall live in the same eternal present. In Ghatikara Sutta, someone else enacts the eternal high points:”While he was there, Ānanda, the Lord Kassapa, stayed near Benares at Isipatana in the deer-park. ”.
Babe Ruth is still playing baseball; Che Guevara is still busy leading Communist guerrilla; Michael Jackson moonwalks incessantly in a time beyond time recaptured on an ongoing basis. At N. Morita's funeral, Karate Kid star R. Macchio addressed departed Morita as “forever my sensei”, although Morita (the famous Miyagi on screen) had declared he had never studied martial arts: duration wins over linear time.
Pictures used to promote products associated with legendary physique superstar and actor Steve Reeves portrayed Reeves as he looked at the top of his career in the 1950s: a way he had stopped looking decades before the product ever
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hit the shelves.
Industrial production and the modern information society, too, have their own version of circular duration:
La victoire de la bourgeoisie est la victoire du temps profondément historique, parce qu’il est le temps de la production économique qui transforme la société, en permanence et de fond en comble. -...-Le temps pseudo-cyclique est celui de la consommation de la survie économique moderne, la survie augmentée, où le vécu quotidien reste privé de décision et soumis, non plus à l’ordre naturel, mais à la pseudo-nature développée dans le travail aliéné ; et donc ce temps retrouve tout naturellement le vieux rythme cyclique qui réglait la survie des sociétés pré-industrielles. Le temps pseudo-cyclique à la fois prend appui sur les traces naturelles du temps cyclique, et en compose de nouvelles combinaisons homologues : le jour et la nuit, le travail et le repos hebdomadaire, le retour des périodes de vacances. (Debord 1967:point 141,150). "Very truly I tell you," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" (John 8:58). "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. (Job 38:4). 'Having a personal relationship with Jesus', or asking oneself 'what would Jesus do' is the way some Christian denominations approach ”the need to make the experience of the past into the present”, “ancient events continually held up for emulation”. Noted Italian singer Antonello Venditti captures it well in his 1986 hit Giulio Cesare: Nasce qui da te qui davanti a te Giulio Cesare (here at your place, right in front of you Julius Caesar is born right now).
Emotional intelligence notable Brackett uses a similar approach he calls
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“meta-moment”. Before “going for the jugular” after someone “triggers us”, Brackett advises to engage in cognitive reconstruction (= how would our “best self” 2058 react?) to find possible soothing or acceptable alternative explanations to avoid lashing out. “Don’t go for the jugular” appears also in the Eighteen Commitments Of Clearing
The Mind by XII century Tibetan Buddhist master Chekawa Yeshe Dorje.
In 2006 Dr. Gilbert published a study in which hospital daytreatment patients “with major/severe complex long-term difficulties” who rated high on shame and self-criticism engaged in compassionate mind training (CMT). Participants attended a weekly two-hour class for twelve weeks. The study concluded, “When patients find it difficult to generate alternative thoughts or feelings to their self-attacking thoughts, they can focus on their compassionate image and consider ‘what would my compassionate image/perfect nurturer say to me?’ ” (Goldstein 2015:67). In Hinayana Buddhism, Gautama Buddha was a supreme teacher who entered final extinction many centuries ago, whereas in Mahayana (the “wise physician” parable, for example), Gautama Buddha's departure constitutes a teaching detour. Much as Jesus is the earthly manifestation of a quintessential logos (here: archetypal principle or -in modern parlance- a “speech-act” 2059), so Gautama Buddha only pretends to go away, but shall -exactly as is predicated of Jesus- come back in the future.
Was Jesus mere semblance? Was his existence only a sort of projection from the divine plane? In early Christianity the doctrine of docetism preached all that, while in Mahayana Buddhism the “parable of the wise physician” tells the 2058 2059
Instead of Jesus, Gandhi etc. Once again, the gem of contemporary science and Bronze Age mythology coincide.
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same about Gautama Buddha, a mere semblance or reflection of the eternal Buddha. The Islamic Quran (4:157) also states that Jesus' crucifixion only “appeared� to have taken place, much as the Mahayana parable argued centuries before Mohamed.
Ben-Shahar2060 reiterates the importance of projecting one's own actual decisions onto the role model's plane: what would s-he do in this circumstance? Naturally, Prophet Smith, Prophet Mohamed, Stalin, Pavolini, Winston Churchill or Lord Hanuman could very well take center-stage in another context; younger audiences may prefer What Would Buffy Do: The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual
Guide, the title of a 2004 book by Jana Riess.
Superstar Billy Graham retired, but Hulk Hogan took over; Andre The Giant died, but wrestler Giant took over wearing an identical tunic, and using the same moves. The question here is not about circular time, whereby time, life or history re-project or re-create xeroxed deja-vus.
Cultural products supply a fitting example. There won't be an exact, verbatim copy of Karate Kid, but the basic storyline can simmer in feminine sauce (The Next Karate Kid, 1994); or in Afro-American sauce ( The Karate Kid, 2010). There won't be an exact copy of Rambo, either, but the basic storyline can stew in either Native-American broth in Thunder (1983); or in a mixture of rainforest, ecological and nativist motifs in Indio (1989): duration wins over linear time.
2060
2005-6a:lecture 24.
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Linear time cannot be successfully recovered; the best movie and exhibit about dinosaurs cannot even begin to compare with a bygone reality we mostly ignore. Duration, on the other hand, unfolds right here and now.
The peeping busybody, the idle bystander are thus offered the opportunity to switch sides, to join the godly savior-hero-founder, to 'enter the myth' right here and now going through the high points of its petrified path (annunciation, ministry, rejection, doubt, betrayal, sulking, sparagmos, comeback...). There is little difference when stores offer customized DVDs for children, where the child's picture can be artfully inserted, and they thus become a character in the onscreen adventures of educational cartoon character Dora The Explorer, for example.
The shaking of those fists, the shedding of those tears, the march to show support for -or hostility against- this, that or another party, country, cause or agenda no longer is a sheepish act brainwashed zombies perform going along with what happens to be 'in' this season, but the circular re-edition (=the recapture=hyperreal repetition) of the emotionally vibrant heroism of the savior-hero, who went against the grain, against all odds when his precious life hung in a balance: history was still in the making.
Broadly put, whether under the guise of filial piety, gratitude or otherwise, the value of remaining loyal through thick and thin to the end is extolled. Urban legends convey stories of “vanishing hitchhikers� and other ghosts who -just like Michael Jackson who moonwalks nowadays outside of time and 1624
space- are stuck in a time-space loop in their ongoing bid to return home, or to save obscure motorists from the fatal collision that took their life on that very day in the past.
What a supercharged ethical statement peeping busybodies make about themselves: a therapy of commitment. That way, hobos and hillbillies can be reborn by mythical proxy from the sacred oak (druids=men of/from the oak tree 2061) of absolute morality, valiance, patriotism, or whichever other 'virtue' is being peddled at the moment.
Is the entire situation a stage act? Is the arch-villain a government informant performing a script? It doesn't matter, if public reaction is to be measured, as the famous “Castro study” documented in 19672062.
Kehoe2063 emphasizes how the human mind irresistibly tends to treat highly subjective, value-laden utterances (transcendence=rapport talk 2064) as if they consisted of forensic pieces of information (facticity=report talk 2065).
Again: people playing the part (embodying the exempla, stirring up 2061
Military decorations across ages and regimes could be presented in the variant “with oak leaves”(Germany, Spain, United States...), an equivalent to the Latin use of laurel. 2062 Study by Jones&Harris. People were randomly instructed to write either a short and cogent defence, or indictment of Castro's regime. They were instructed, and thus played a role. They made no personal emotional investment. Later, other people were asked to grade the level of favor essays afforded the Castro regime, after being clearly told essay writers had been urged to write either an indictment or a defence of said regime. It turns out, people identified the writer of a pro-Castro essay with pro-Castro sympathies and so forth. Therefore, no matter how many informants for hire are exposed, the public shall keep on reacting like a well-trained laboratory specimen along the lines mos and suchlike easily predict. 2063 2011:The Conscious Mind In Using Language. 2064 Example: “John is arrogant”. 2065 Example: “John is 1m70 tall”.
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petrified mythologies...) convincingly enough are automatically assumed to be authentic. Tannen2066 approvingly reports what U.S politician Kunin wrote: obstacle's in Kunin's political career as public speaker were overcome by “a passionate belief in what she had to say -...- fired up by conviction�. Tannen also disclaims the dark triad (machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy) in Kunin's case because Kunin2067 was working towards an altruistic goal: the betterment of society.
What are those statements/images about, exactly? Are they about politics or religion? Professor of religion at Boston University, S. Prothero 2068 declared at a conference that his professional opinion -substantiated through both formal and informal investigations- was that people, typically university students, in a purportedly religious country like the USA, have no idea what religion is about, and fail even elementary tests administered to assess their religious literacy.
The same can be argued about politics. What people are after, essentially, is the feeling of oneness, the shaking of fists, the shedding of tears, the gasping for breath, and the chasing after one or more elusive ghosts, covenants, boons, 'just causes', 'honest wars', windfalls etc that all political parties promise; all religions write about; all regimes engage in; all martyrs die for in the tradition of the best folklore.
The PEW U.S Religious Knowledge Survey (2010) concluded:�The 2066 2067 2068
2003:lecture 11. Former Democrat and first Jewish governor of Vermont. No date.
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average respondent answered 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions correctly. ”. One man's martyr is another man's bandit (heretic, traitor...), or one man's 'truth' is another man's lie, but the psychotic fixation, the neurological and gastrointestinal syndromes are the same, in the attempt to cross the threshold, and to join the herosavior in his circular myth(ology).
In more ancient Hinayana Buddhism, Bodhisattva was a title reserved to Gautama Buddha in his countless lives before enlightenment. In later Mahayana Buddhism, most practitioners take the Bodhisattva vow, thus joining the herofounder2069. Orthodox Christianity offers theosis (=becoming god, attaining real union with god):”"I said, 'You are "gods"; you are all sons of the Most High.' ”. (Psalm 82:6);”that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ” (John 17:21). Hindu tantra recites:”by none but a god shall a god be worshiped”.
It may prove useful to ponder what follows:
In terms of cost-benefit analysis , the actual payoff for victimhood can be very high and the risk of discovery of a hoax is very small. This issue of "secondary gain" plays an important part in racist and anti-semitic hoaxes, and the search for an answer to this troubling phenomenon is well served by the question, ''Who benefits?". Also, when a hoaxer gets caught , which isn't often, there are "fall back" 2069
“In contrast, the bodhisattva portrayed in many Mahayana scriptures was only an individual who aspired to attain enlightenment. His eventual enlightenment was not assured. He had not received a prediction that he would eventually attain enlightenment and he even backslid in his practice. He was the ordinary man as bodhisattva. Of course, great bodhisattvas (who were not subject to backsliding and other ills) such as Samantabhadra, Manjusri, Avalokitesvara, and Maitreya were also mentioned in Mahayana scriptures along with the obscure, ordinary practitioner of Mahayana Buddhism who considered himself a bodhisattva.” (Hirakawa 1990:267).
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positions which can put a positive "spin" on the incident. The hoaxer's status may be reframed so that "blaming the victim" can be invoked, whereby the hoax is understandable. Or, he may became "mentally ill," which also removes any responsibility for the hoax. -...-. Many hoaxers have received substantial assistance from sympathizers and well-wishers, -...-. The most important benefits of victimization are psychological, however. -...- If membership figures for organizations are hard to determine, statistics on racist and anti-Semitic hoaxes are problematic as well. While recent legislation calls for reporting "hate crimes," (including unsolved cases) hoaxes and fabrications are not required to be reported as such. When an incident is discovered to be a hoax it ought to be dropped from the statistics, but maybe not. Many incidents are only reported in the local media and die when they reach the wire services. I've also been told that a fair number are simply "spiked" once their nature is ascertained, out of "sensitivity" to minority concerns, or not to "give ammunition" to racists. (Wilcox 1990:4,6, emphasis added). At the University of Kansas, for example, a group of black students descended on a white fraternity with clubs and other weapons shouting threats and insults after a black student had allegedly been insulted there. Fortunately, there was no violence in spite of the fact terroristic threats were apparently made. Neither the campus press or the local daily mentioned the incident. One has to wonder how many times such incidents occur nationwide in a year. Surely, they contain the elements of a "hate crime." In virtually every case, however, we can be sure that issues of "sensitivity" are raised, along with fear of "backlash" and "misunderstanding." (Wilcox 1994:26). In the summer of 1977, Cathleen Crowell Webb, then sixteen years old, reported that she had been raped. Webb showed police her torn blouse and scars allegedly inflicted by the rapist; she also described the rapist to a police sketch artist. The police sketch just happened to match the likeness of Gary Dotson. Two years later, on the strength of this "eyewitness" evidence, Dotson was sentenced to not less than twenty-five years and not more than fifty years in the Illinois State penitentiary. Six years later, in March 1985, Webb retracted her story. She told authorities that she had made up the rape charge in order to cover up a sexual experience with her boyfriend. Dotson asked that his conviction be overturned. The original judge would not reverse the decision. The governor of Illinois refused a pardon but did commute Dotson's sentence to the six years served. Both the judge and the governor continued to 1628
believe the original story—the false allegation was more believable than the recantation and the truth. It took Dotson four more years to clear his name through DNA tests showing that the semen on Webb's underwear could not have come from Dotson but could have come from her boyfriend. The effects of a teenager's projections lasted for twelve years, ruining twelve years of an innocent person's life. (Pratkanis&Aronson 2001:ch.11, emphasis added). An author who was so desperate to get his book published that he staged a hoax involving a baby dragon has won a lucrative publishing contract. After numerous rejections Allistair Mitchell concocted a tale that a dragon had been found in a garage last year. He said: "I created the hoax in order to attract potential readers." -...-.In fact the dragon was created by Crawley Creatures, the model makers behind TV's Walking with Dinosaurs, and the jar was made by a specialist glass blowing studio in the Isle of Wight. A Waterstone's spokesman said: "This is a very refreshing approach to book publishing. (BBC News 2004: no page, emphasis added). Dramatic footage of a polar bear tending her newborn cubs in the flagship BBC show Frozen Planet was filmed in a Dutch zoo using fake snow. -...- Eight million viewers were led to believe the scene had been captured by BBC cameramen inside an underground cave in the brutal sub-zero temperatures of the Arctic wilderness. But the footage, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, and interspersed with real shots of the Arctic, was in fact filmed in a den made of plaster and wood in a wildlife enclosure. -...- Sir David, 85, also defended the methods used by Frozen Planet. He said: ‘If you had tried to put a camera in the wild in a polar bear den, she would either have killed the cub or the cameraman.’ He added: ‘It’s not falsehood, and we don’t keep it secret either. (Gladdis 2011: no page, emphasis added). ABC Nightline investigation later revealed that the leaders of the Romanian revolution had resorted to just such a grisly strategy— videotaping rows of corpses dug up from paupers' graves and claiming they were the bodies of demonstrators killed by Ceausescu forces. -...- Some of the threats may be spurious, traceable to a lone exile nursing old resentments. But there is something odd, and perhaps significant, about the way most of these messages are worded: They borrow the archaic language of the Iron Guard's mystic nationalism. In Athens the letters even featured obsolete accent marks. Most observers say this is an old Securitate cover 1629
tactic. -...- to intimidate dissidents, sometimes inventing new rightwing groups. (Anton 1992: no page, emphasis added). Many Klansmen join through the mail and rarely or never attend meetings. Some belong to several Klans, and a few carry cards from virtually all of them. Thus, 1,000 "members" may represent only eight or nine hundred actual Klansmen and even fewer are actual participants in Klan activities. Subtract from this police informants, agents for "monitoring" groups, curiosity seekers and literature collectors, and this figure diminishes even further. -...-Another case involving the KGB surfaced recently with the defection of East German intelligence agents. The West German newspaper Die Welt reported in 1990 that West German security authorities had determined that the KGB or other Soviet state security services were responsible for numerous desecrations of synagogues in West Germany over the past forty years. The article also noted that the KGB worked in close cooperation with neo-Nazi groups. John Barron, in his book, K.G.B. - Secret work of Soviet Secret Agents discusses Communist complicity in anti-Semitic hoaxes. (Wilcox 1994:14,98).
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THE PEDLAR'S TRAGEDY The vast majority of tricks of the trade and persuasion techniques examined in this essay shall be considered faulty 2070; for example, Jimmy Guieu may or may not have been this Resistance hero; Malanga may be a university researcher (often incorrectly billed as university professor): that says nothing whatsoever about their theories about UFOs and so forth.
Controversy arose about recurring statements Jesse Ventura -the wrestler turned politician, and later elected governor of Minnesota- made about being a U.S Navy SEAL corp member. It appears Ventura belonged to a completely different Navy unit; Ventura retorts:”Today we refer to all of us as SEALs ” 2071. Martial arts instructor Furey, famous for a series of 'zero to superhero' video courses for the masses, purportedly claimed to have been a pupil of legendary wrestler Karl Gotch: a relationship Gotch sternly denied, apparently.
Yet, all the techniques/episodes examined have one thing in common: they count on neuralgic spots of the human psyche to trigger powerful knee-jerk reactions that hide possible rational planning, inconsistencies and oddities in a dust storm of elation, whereby the public cries, laughs, angers etc itself asleep, not without so doing the persuader's bidding, for example buying a product, voting a party, marching to support a victim and what not:”Ethos enables the audience to
2070 2071
Monvoisin 2007. Reading Eagle, December 16, 1999.
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accept the persuasive change advocated by the person communicating the message.”2072.
What is being discussed here is not exactly new. Ancient thinkers already situated persuasion on the threshold between logos (rational account, extrapolation of the law), ethos (priority given to the credibility of the speaker and/or circumstances, “Ethos, the appeal to the source's character,”2073) and pathos (bandwagon and emotional appeals, or sentimentality as a feeling based on thoughts):”emotions are not tools of cognition or criteria of judgment. The ability to distinguish between knowledge and feelings is an essential element -...- for the achievement and preservation of self-esteem” 2074;”reason is your faculty of perceiving reality; to act against reason is to act against reality”2075.
The present writer's point is that the part reserved to rational accounts (and not just petty partisan truths) doesn't even begin to compare with credibility issues (most often based on commodious and/or political premises) and issues related to landslides of emotion and bursting barrels of tears, spleen or bile. Logos hasn't disappeared officially, but what is presented as rational account is most often just 'emotional truth' based on commodious credibility issues.
Astute adviser to already eccentric visionary President Wilson (a loner and an home-schooled dyslexic), Jewish-American propaganda genius (and Freud's Bonniksen 2006:38. Bonniksen 2006:17. 2074 Branden 2000. 2075 Branden 1960/1969: lesson 2. 2072 2073
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nephew) Edward Bernays had made a point of emphasizing U.S WWI war intervention as exquisitely humanitarian/disinterested (“making the world safe for democracy”). Some wrote about the Wilson administration:
The typical textbook portrays Woodrow Wilson, who served from 1913 to 1921, as one of our great liberal presidents. They point to his institution of the federal income tax, creation of the Federal Reserve System, implementation of tariff and antitrust reform, development of the first child-labor law, and passage of women’s suffrage among his progressive accomplishments -...-.A different picture emerges, however, when one studies Wilson’s writings and record more deeply. His record on race relations, in particular, is appalling; he set black progress in the United States back fifty years by instituting racial segregation throughout the federal government and greatly empowering the most racist Southern faction within the Democratic Party. Furthermore, he was responsible for repressive measures against political radicals vastly greater than anything Senator Joe McCarthy ever contemplated, let alone did. (Bartlett 2008:95). Call it what you like—progressivism, fascism, communism, or totalitarianism--the first true enterprise of this kind was established not in Russia or Italy or Germany but in the United States, and Woodrow Wilson was the twentieth century's first fascist dictator. This claim may sound outrageous on its face, but consider the evidence. More dissidents were arrested or jailed in a few years under Wilson than under Mussolini during the entire 1920s. Wilson arguably did as much if not more violence to civil liberties in his last three years in office than Mussolini did in his first twelve. Wilson created a better and more effective propaganda ministry than Mussolini ever had. In the 1920s Mussolini's critics harangued him-rightly--for using his semiofficial Fascisti to bully the opposition and for his harassment of the press. Just a few years earlier, Wilson had unleashed literally hundreds of thousands of badge-carrying goons on the American people and prosecuted a vicious campaign against the press that would have made Mussolini envious. Wilson didn't act alone. Like Mussolini and Hitler, he had an activist ideological movement at his disposal. In Italy they were called Fascists. In Germany they were called National Socialists. In America we called them progressives. -...-Wilson's status as the most racist president of the twentieth century is usually attributed to the fact that he was a southerner, indeed the first southern president since Reconstruction. 1633
And it is true that he harbored many Dixiecrat attitudes. His resegregation of the federal government, his support for antimiscegenation laws, his antagonism toward black civil rights leaders as well as antilynching laws, and his notorious fondness for D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation all testify to that.(Goldberg 2007:50,146). Bill Clinton has sparked fury after allegedly saying of Barack Obama: "A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee." The expresident made the outrageous comment during Obama's Democratic primary race with Clinton's wife Hillary, a new book claims. (Pettifor 2010:no page). I'll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years ( U.S President L.B. Johnson commenting to insiders on the 1964 Civil Rights Act and on proposed Great Society Programs). Bernays' genius was behind the Communist scare -orchestrated on behalf of fruit multinationals- that led to covert operations preparing for the golpe in Guatemala in the early 1950s, employing a wide array of tactics including ritual defamation,
rigged
press
conferences,
(probably)
remotely
controlled
demonstrations of hostility relayed through in-home news agencies in turn exaggerating a faddish atmosphere of impending doom against which 'the good guys' had a moral duty to rise: wartime tactics never stopped paying dividends.
The cat has been let out of the bag about the sincere or simply purposeful nature behind the orgy of sentimental displays, vicarious trauma (= second person drama= hearing the accounts of trauma), and grotesquely colossal attitudes courtesy of saviors, minutemen, prophets of doom and other hecklers:
It is now an unstated but I think pervasive axiom of the human rights movement that those agents whose behavior it wishes to affect— 1634
governments, armies, businesses, and militias—are exposed in some significant way to the force of public opinion, and that they are (psychically or emotionally) structured like individuals in a strong social or cultural context that renders them vulnerable to feelings of dishonor, embarrassment, disgrace, or ignominy. Shame is thought of as a primordial force that articulates or links knowledge with action, a feeling or a sensation brought on not by physical contact but by knowledge or consciousness alone. And it signifies involvement in a social network, exposure to others and susceptibility to their gaze -...-.The dark side of revelation is overexposure. Sometimes we call it voyeurism, sometimes compassion fatigue, sometimes the obscenity of images or ‘‘disaster pornography.’ (Keenan 2004:435-438, emphasis added). After making a bunch of trivial decisions, such as whether to respond right away or file the email until later, we have fewer cognitive resources available to weigh the pros and cons of more important decisions. Psychologists call this decision fatigue. (Viskontas 2017:1592076). Another product is touted as using the ingredient "that doctors recommend." By reading the label, we discover the "magic" ingredient to be good old inexpensive aspirin. Several pharmaceutical companies also market "extra-strength" varieties of "arthritic pain" formulations. You will pay a premium price for these products, although their extra strength comes only from extra aspirin (or acetaminophen, an aspirin substitute), along with a dose of caffeine. Taking additional aspirin would be less expensive, but the product sounds great in the ads: "Not one, but a combination of medically proven ingredients in an extrastrength formula.". Such blatant attempts at mass persuasion seem pitifully obvious when we are mindful and scrutinize them closely. But most of us are not always mindful and are, therefore, vulnerable to being unwittingly influenced. Thus the cash registers ring, and in tremendous numbers we line up and buy the advertised product as if we really believed that there is a major difference among brands of aspirin. ( Pratkanis&Aronson 2001:ch.6, emphasis added.). The same idea of the world being in danger if the 'cause' is not supported was already present in the pseudo-Manichean approach wanting god to hold each man responsible for the entire world (St. John Chrysostom). With small 2076
Viskontas cites studies where judges or talent scouts at the end of a shift are likely to simply turn requests down rather than to engage in an appropriate evaluation of all pros and cons. (2017: Can you Multitask Efficiently).
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improvements the 'move' is guaranteed to work in all situations: people who are not religious may find it appealing under the guise of thwarting the plans of '...ists' of one breed or another.
Personality coach Bradshaw has been dubbed “the shaman of shame”: Bradshaw's system would supposedly works wonders in “healing one's inner wounded child”, and so forth. Of course, all theologies -theist and atheist alike, from Christianity to Marxism- foster new categories of shame in order for them to offer suitable healing afterward.
Here Jesus suffered so much just as we can see in the Mel Gibson movie. He suffered for us, so the least we owe him is to follow the dictates of [insert Christian denomination here]. A blessed minority suffered endless persecution and indignities, and we didn't do anything to prevent it: the least we owe them is to take a certain side in Middle-Eastern/marriage politics/affirmative actions and welfare policies:”here is a Church structure being buttressed by the supposed words of a famous martyr”2077.
A corrupt politician is caught as the bohemian profligate he is. Because he proudly stood for [insert politicized flapdoodle here], however, the least we owe him is to afford him a blank slate...unless we want to be “the kind of person” who doesn't respect [insert here detail that makes one gasp for breath]...shame shamanism. 2077
Price 2018b.
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Conscience thus becomes little more than the sentimentalized and prettified bundle of recycled gnostic flapdoodle, pathetic taboos and miserable atonement routines typical of a given society that are a commodious loyalty test to an adventitious power system. Many contemplate aghast how third-world immigrants most often either fail to respond to shame shamanism rooted in rhetoric from the 1960s or war propaganda, or lampoon and defy such taboos openly.
Much earlier in his career, Bernays had masterminded a campaign on behalf of tobacco multinationals to make smoking appealing to women; during public events paid female testimonials were caught on film smoking, for example. Rhetoric was also developed through paid newspaper columns to establish a link between the women's emancipation movement and smoking: the smoking “new woman” was also compared to the Statue of Liberty:
In the late 1920s, George W. Hill, owner of American Tobacco, hired America’s leading public relations guru, Edward Bernays, to design a new advertising initiative. The problem was simple: Despite a decade’s worth of movies, magazine photos, and F.Scott Fitzgerald stories, many Americans still regarded women smokers as “hussies.” Working on behalf of his new, prize client, Bernays hired a prominent psychoanalyst, A. A. Brill, to see what might be done to eliminate once and forever the negative connotations associated with cigarette-wielding women. “Some women regard cigarettes as symbols of freedom,” Brill advised. “Smoking is a sublimation of oral eroticism: holding a cigarette in the mouth excites the oral zone. It is perfectly normal for women to want to smoke cigarettes. Further, the first women who smoked probably had an excess of masculine components and adopted the habit as a masculine act. But today the emancipation of women has suppressed many of the feminine desires. More women now do the same work as men do.… Cigarettes, which are equated with men, become torches of freedom.” -...- Bernays contacted Ruth Hale, “a 1637
leading feminist,” and arranged to have “ten young women lighting ‘torches of freedom’ ” at the 1929 Easter parade on Fifth Avenue. Newspapers carried front-page items marveling at this “bold protest against women’s inequality.” And American Tobacco had itself a new market segment.(Zeitz 2006:134). the financial services industry corrupted the U.S. government, leading to a lack of oversight on Wall Street and to the financial meltdown of 2008. The film also describes how the financial services industry paid leading academics (deans, heads of departments, university professors) to write expert reports in the service of the financial industry and Wall Street. (Ariely 2012:43). Bernays as well first massively utilized
financial support lent to
'scientists' to publish 'studies' that extolled the virtues -or minimized the dangers- of products his clients had to sell:
Two investigators selected 161 studies, all published during me same six-year span, of the possible risks to human health of four chemicals. Of the studies funded by industry, only 14 percent found harmful effects on health; of those funded independenrly, fully 60 percent found harmful effects -...-.Two Danish investigators examined 159 clinical trials that had been published between 1997 and 2001 in The British Medical Journal where authors are required to declare potential conflicts of interest. The researchers could therefore compare studies in which me investigators had declared a conflict of interest with those in which there was none. The findings were "significantly more positive toward the experimental intervention" (i.e., the new drug compared to an older one) when the study had been funded by a for-profit organization (Tavris&Aronson 2007:49). These differences are often misinterpreted. Or -I should say- results from these [brain] studies are commonly overinterpreted with a good “just so story” (Viskontas 2017: How Different Are Male And Female Brains). Bernays' campaigns to foster smoking into the mainstream were so successful that critics can truthfully write about the cigarette motifs in Hitchcock's 1638
movies. Bernays shrewdly hijacked the human mind's fixations (for example, smoking and eroticism), originally unrelated to commercial smoking:
Although there are nuances to the way each of these objects functions in films generally, depending on whether it is a case or a lighter, for the purposes of the discussion here they may be combined. The essential point is that the case or lighter is originally a gift from a woman to a man. In most such cases, the gift signals the woman’s – frequently rather possessive – desire. -...-In other films, the sexual connotations to the gift are more muted, and the case/lighter serves, rather, to introduce another thread into the film: it becomes evidence in a murder investigation. (Walker 2005:26-7). Bernays credited himself with inventing “public relations” to give propaganda a more respectable name, and -in Bernays' own words- to apply war propaganda methods of persuasion and control to peace time priorities: from a culture based on 'need' to a culture based on 'desire', or the old surfeit motif of ageold folklore and politics applied to the industrial mass-democracy, and its consumerism:
[Bernays] was a veteran of George Creel’s CPI and America’s leading “public relations counsel” in the 1920s. With a client roster that included some of the nation’s most lucrative business concerns —the United Fruit Company, General Motors, Procter & Gamble, Philco, and Liggett & Myers, among them—Bernays aggressively championed the integration of marketing and psychology. (Zeitz 2006:155). As described by Tim Adams of the London Observer, Bernays “ thought that the safest way of maintaining democracy was to distract people from dangerous political thought by letting them think that their real choices were as consumers. ”(Lakhani 2008:26). Previously, scientists thought this [brain] area responded only to physical rewards, including chocolate and cocaine. But now for the 1639
first time, the researchers watched as automobiles stimulated these mental explosions. -...-The link between transportation and faces isn’t limited to sports cars. -...-The more something resembles a human face, the more emotional attachment we feel for it. Advertising frequently manipulates this response. Michelin tires plunks a couple of animated eyes and a smile onto a charmless stack of tires, and presto, those tires have a sparkling personality. (Hogshead 2010:36). We're bombarded by business, t h e media, a n d t h e c h u r c h with t h e lie that w e ' r e h e r e to be happy, fulfilled, a n d comfortable. For motives of profit, the lies of m a t e r i a l i sm a n d advertising suggest that if w e ' r e not happy, comfortable, a n d fulfilled, we must be eating t h e wrong cereal or driving t h e wrong car. Or t hat we must n o t have i t right with God. How wicked! -...-Our laziness—our n a t u r a l idolatry of ease a n d comfort— makes us co-conspirators with t h e mass media. (Peck 1997:32, emphasis added). POSITIONING PLUS PACKAGING EQUALS DESIRE — AND A DESIRE IS A BUYER -...- Your prospect buys on psychological autopilot (Lakhani 2009:45,95). I heard someone the other day in the video store, went: “I need this VCR!”, and it was just as dramatic a statement for that person as someone in one of the third world countries that we plunder saying “I need rice!”. I mean, it’s a new need. (Roderick 1992: Hegel And Modern Life).
Who benefits from the appearance expectations? • The $38 billion hair industry. • The $33 billion diet industry. • The $24 billion skincare industry. • The $18 billion makeup industry. • The $15 billion perfume industry. • The $13 billion cosmetic surgery industry. That’s a whole bunch of folks depending on us to see and believe messages that sell the socialcommunity expectations of appearance. If we don’t believe we’re too fat, ugly and old, then they don’t sell their products. If they don’t sell their products, they don’t make their house payments. The pressure is on! (Brown 2007:85). Discussing Marx, Roderick comments about capitalism that:”reduce[s] the rich amount of human needs to needs that can be simply bought and sold on the 1640
market place -...- our needs in terms of marketable needs -...- [for example] having intimate sexual conversations with one another, now that's telephonised and you put it on your Visa [credit card], right? ”2078.
Buddhist master Shantideva wrote:”We who are like senseless children shrink from suffering, but love its causes. We hurt ourselves; our pain is selfinflicted!”. Modern consumerism is too glad to oblige: decaffeinated coffee for the coffee-a-holic; low-calorie donuts; low-fat whipped cream to enjoy a guiltless treat...
Bernays furthermore popularized the concept of stock investing among the middle classes as the best way to allegedly get their slice of the capitalist cake, thus providing stock-market operators with an endless supply of impotent shareholders kept in the dark about what really goes on behind the corporate curtain. That went back to the honored British tradition dating back to the 1690s, which henceforth saw recurring boom-and-bust cycles that enriched some and impoverished many.
Huettel2079 claims that “a comprehensive survey of investments held in the retirement saving accounts of employees in the twenty largest 401k [=retirement] plans -...- on average these employees held almost half of their retirement savings in the stock of a single company, their own employer [offering 1992:Hegel And Modern Life. As the present writer suggests, every epoch has its totem imagery. Speaking in the early 1990s, Roderick here captures a clear obsession of the 1990s: the proliferation telephone usages. That was way back when the internet was in its infancy, well before the boom of the late 1990s. In just a few years, the obsession with the telephone would vanish to the advantage of the internet, possibly an evolution of the telephone itself technical wonders such as théâtrophone had prefigured over a century earlier. 2079 2014:Risk. 2078
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them such stocks at a discount]”.
Persuading the “stupid” (= Bernays' own word) masses that they needed a constant inflow of consumer goods; or that taking up smoking was in their best emotional interest would be no different from persuading them that they needed a war with another country to make an ethical statement 2080. Phallic projections might perhaps prove elucidative. A bigger car as the wish-fulfillment for the impossibility of a bigger penis2081 or greater mating appeal2082: an ever-extending phallus as image of one's “power” (R.L. Moore), vital energy and ensuing possibilities (=the obsession with endless potential soon to manifest).
With what compulsive consumerism, democratization of debit and credit schemes entail, everybody who joins the game becomes “another brick in the wall”, an indentured retainer on the system's service who shall think twice about switching loyalties to sources outside the system in fear of losing not only elusive access to welfare mass-democracy (rather abstract for most), but to their periodical fix of credit and debit allowances, mirage miracle investments, trendy fads and worthless -though not valueless2083 -, ego-centered services -from erotic web cam Cfr.BBC 2002, episode Happiness Machines. An ad for Chevrolet De Luxe Sport Sedan Life Magazine -to name one- published (March 4, 1940) contained a vague sexual suggestion as punchline:”It has extra length where length counts”. Traditional, immemorial Hindu medicine ayurveda, however, seems to suggest the opposite:”The Brhat-samhita asserts that a small penis is best and that men fortunate enough to be endowed with such members will be wealthy, while those who have large ones will be unable to produce sons.” (Powers 2009:130). 2082 An ad for Kreml hair tonic-dressing Life Magazine -to name one- published (March 4, 1940) is in the form of a diary entry an unknown woman writes confessing how she had chosen “George” because of his impeccable hairdo over Tom (the “witty, fun” guy); Dick (the successful -albeit bald- “go-getter”); Harry ( a Fred Astaire kind of chap who danced divinely). The hair tonic thus greatly enhanced George's mating potential against such seemingly overwhelming factors as money (Dick), charm (Tom), and social skills (Harry). 2083 The difference can be grasped this way. An old car may be worth only very little money according to insurance 2080 2081
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sites to social networks- upon which their life, horizon and self-esteem rest.
Bernays and other trail-blazers didn't work so hard to put the system in place for naught to start with:
Some methods of purchase couple the pain and pleasure tightly. When you pay for something upfront using cash, the coupling is strong: The pain of payment is experienced at the same moment that the pleasure of consumption starts. But humans have developed numerous methods, such as prepayment and the use of credit cards, for decoupling the pain from the pleasure. (Hamilton 2016:78-79). Jewish-American Bernays played a pivotal role in the service of western mass-democracy; Romanian Fascist leader Codreanu was a Christian nationalist of mystical tendencies, abhorred western mass-democracy, was a stern judaeophobe, and the ideological precursor of the WWII Romanian Fascist regime.
Yet Codreanu's words below could easily be Bernays', which shows -as this writing contends- that obtuse allegories, petrified mythologies and all the rest can be intuitively tailored to suit most agendas or situations with minimal interventions:
Supporters could be found for any "ideas," or votes for anyone running for public office. But this does not depend on the people's understanding of those "ideas," "laws" or "candidates" but on something entirely different: on the adroitness of individuals to win the goodwill of the multitudes. There is nothing more capricious and unstable in opinions than the multitude. Since the war, this multitude was, in turn, Averescan, Liberal, Nationalistic, National-Peasant, policies or any other legal parameter one might use; the affective or personal value of the same for a given individual can hardly be converted into bank notes.
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Iorgan, etc. hailing each, only to spit on each a year later, thus recognizing its own error, disorientation and incapacity. Its criterion for selection is: "Let us try some others." Thus, the choosing is done not according to judgement and knowledge, but haphazardly and trusting to luck. (1976: election, selection, heredity). Furthermore, this isn't a method that works only when applied in/to political matters or merchandise sold on shelf. A ritual that symbolizes cosmic fertilization (the rain as sperm of the sky gods upon mother Earth, etc) 2084 that indigenous pacific islanders adopt can be seamlessly re-branded to become bungeejumping so that the overstressed 'weekend warriors' of the westernized world can feel abreast of the latest trends in leisure sports. The tribal member of Pacific island societies trying to secure a good harvest, and the anonymous westerner in his pursuit of posh idleness share the wonderful human psyche, and its manifold proclivities.
Tribal tattoos aren't a demarcation line anymore, either. Western inner city pencil-necked sweat-hogs covered in all sorts of tribal tattoos, piercing and so forth to show off possibly outnumber indigenous people doing the same for allegedly mystical reasons: piercing as a way to reclaim one's own body in an age of related anxieties. The elaborate hairstyle and make-up of a Japanese geiko have reportedly sexual undertones: the make-up lines behind her neck allegedly recall female genitalia.
2084
“Holy Earth, pure Earth, arrayed herself for holy Heaven. Heaven, the great god, ejaculated into the vast Earth. He impregnated her with the heroic seed of Tree and Reed. The whole of Earth, a good cow, became impregnated with Heaven’s fine semen. Earth rejoiced in the life-giving plants; she devoted herself to giving birth to them.�(Sumerian Debate literature, III millennium BCE, Rubio trans.).
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The inner-city dweller of defaced megalopolises Beirut-style can thus relive his past from bygone ages archetypal images haunt. S-he becomes a walking cathedral like shaman-priests of hunting-gathering societies always on the move, whence the need for walking cathedrals: “unconscious acting out of some of these elements in initiatory process�2085 which R.L. Moore compares to Cargo cults.
The only caution is that contemporary walking cathedrals have mostly no clue about the symbols they etched on their skins, however; tattooed gnostic punchlines are often misspelled turning the person into a walking joke: mere narcissistic supply. Postmodern society's shamans look more like elementary schoolchildren having failed a couple grades because of some mental condition than medicine men coming back from a mythical quest.
The only residual psychical connection remains the one that archetypal elementary ideas and mankind's psychical unity provide. Alternatively, pain is what people are essentially after. Wrestling with pain as their bodies get pierced again and again is what is paramount; odd pictographs or foolish images fade in the background.
A famous variety of coffee sells in some highfalutin eateries the world over for up to thirty-five euros each cup. The allegedly most expensive coffee on Earth – regularly served to the affluent and powerful as its cost may dictate- comes from a very peculiar location: the intestines of a small animal as feces containing the 2085
Moore 2001:part 2.
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remains of coffee beans that are patiently harvested and processed. According to a tragicomic Italian scandal, Berlusconi's kitchen paid string beans euro 80/kg...
Bernays' uncomplimentary opinion of the masses -whose cravings made his (and his employers') fortune- isn't an isolate case. Acclaimed director George Lucas declared:”Star Wars didn't kill the film industry or infantilize it -...- popcorn pictures have always ruled. Why do people go see these popcorn movies when they're not good? Why is the public so stupid? It's not my fault”2086.
It isn't difficult to link the 'infantile' element to Hulk Hogan's characterization of his fans as “little Hulkamaniacs”2087. Contemporary societies are obsessed by cute imagery: children, puppies and so forth. Where there are puppies there are usually children: a fairy tale, gingerbread world opens in front of one, where grandma just baked a luscious apple pie for one to eat.
Even the most loathsome, crude or insignificant person, animal or thing can be restyled into someone/thing cuddly by adding smallness and cuteness to the portrait. Once smallness enters the pictures, the human mind typically goes on autopilot in 'sweet child' mode.
Infantilism not only materializes in the pre-scripted, gut-wrenching feud that opposed 'The American Dream' Dusty Rhodes to his son Dustin trying to establish himself as a wrestler; or the feud between then real-life brothers in law 2086 2087
Quoted in Biskind 1999:344, emphasis added. Other wrestlers quickly seized the moment. The fans of wrestlers Texas Tornado and Ultimate Warrior were dubbed “little tornadoes” and “little warriors” etc.
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'The Hit Man' Bret Hart and 'The British Bulldog' Davey Boy Smith, which culminated in Bret Hart's defeat and the final hug between a reluctant Hart, Smith and Hart's sister (then Smith's wife).
It may be argued how the turncoat hugging the party liner (wherever the 'line of good' happens to be drawn at any moment in history) on a mountain of debris, corpses etc could be a recurring image in our times. The mountain of debris, corpses smoldering out etc represents the lesson earlier rash judgments and choices now impart, and grows bigger or smaller according to fleeting political priorities:”In other words, people can be wrong in the present when they say they were wrong in the past.”2088.
Saint Paul who created Christianity was in fact a former persecutor; governor Pilate -who oversaw Jesus' execution- is a Saint in the Coptic Christian Church as he supposedly converted; Saint Augustine was an adversary of Christians; Joseph of Arimathea -who received Jesus' body for burial in his own tomb- also belonged to the Jewish supreme council who had condemned Jesus; Milarepa was a nasty black magician in pursuit of revenge; members of ruthless political police corps and busybodies ('influencers' and 'community builders') easily transit on to the victorious enemy's service:
we learn that the woman, Inge, had once been a zealous functionary in the National Socialist girls ’ organization, the League of German Girls (BDM), winning ‘ promotion after promotion ’ and remaining 2088
Gilbert 2006:38.
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loyal to the Nazi cause until the bitter end. After ‘ an eighteen-month grace period ’ at the end of the Second World War, she then became an equally active and successful functionary in the East’s Communistled youth organization, the Free German Youth (FDJ). Inge, the West German narrator notes, appeared to be ‘ perfectly at ease ’ in explaining her rapid switching of allegiance from one political system to another. Inge had many real-life equivalents in the Soviet-Occupied Zone of Germany (SBZ) after the Second World War. Hundreds of thousands of young East Germans made just such a speedy transition from the brown shirt to the blue, from one mass youth organization — the two branches of the Nazi youth movement, the Hitler Youth (HJ) and the BDM — to another, the FDJ, in the mid- to late 1940s. Members of this ‘ Hitler Youth generation ’played the decisive role in reconstructing the Communist state that ultimately emerged in East Germany from the ashes of the Third Reich. -...-From late 1945 onwards, when the East German Communists essentially exonerated the Hitler Youth generation from the crimes of ‘ Hitler fascism ’ , the ideological changeover from the racist, nationalist Weltanschauung of the HJ to the ‘ anti-fascist’ values of the ‘ peace-loving ’ FDJ became a taboo subject.(McDougall 2008:24-5). Ask a happily married couple how they might feel about divorcing, and they will forecast extreme devastation. And though such a dark prediction is largely accurate, a divorce is often less devastating to a married couple than either member might anticipate.-...-“Time heals all wounds” precisely because, over time, you will partially adapt to the state of your world.(Ariely 2010:84). Psychopaths Hare describes, like conventional busybodies, “are much freer than the rest of us to pick and choose the rules and restrictions they will adhere to .”2089;”the psychopath, that personification of remorseless evildoing, has such an established place in the public consciousness. ” 2090. It's the old figure of the mythological trickster that comes back circularly.
It is hard to part noxious psychopathic inmates from sterling members of society who “climb the ladder” or “get ahead” following a Lifetime Conversation 2089 2090
Hare 1993:78. Weber 1991:no page.
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Guide such as that J.K. Van Fleet, a respected professional, manager, speaker and U.S decorated military man published in 1984. It is equally difficult to part Van Fleet's exquisite social climbers from third-rate Dramatic Society members who grimace and posture all along just like most politicians.
Such people can easily span the entire political spectrum: from left-wing terrorist to mainstream leader (Mandela); from left to right-wing violent radicalism, then on to statesmanship (Mussolini); or from right-wing to left-wing maximalism (Mujica); from a liberal to an ultra-conservative agenda (Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte); from a Demo-Christian youth to the leadership of the former Communist party (Renzi); from “criminal and subversive� (according to a Parliamentary committee) Masonic lodge P2 to Prime Minister (Berlusconi)...
Basically, a Star Wars good guy ↔ bad guy circular shtick unfolds, whereby the good guy becomes a bad one -or the other way around-, but deep down he's still good, and he'll find a way to prove it at the last moment. This shtick has been put to good use in the first two Star Wars trilogies, and rumor has it that an hypothetical third Star Wars trilogy shall present the same situation.
Romantic comedies also follow the same blueprint: potential lovers bestow trials and tribulations upon each other before they come to live happy ever after. Stereotypical action movie characters also meet these situations (for example in providential master shticks, and training montages).
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In mainstream politics, will the EU (IMF, Germany...) stop financial transfers to Greece (Portugal, Spain, Italy...), thus letting the noble nation go bankrupt? Will they find a last-minute agreement so that the ensuing implosion of the Euro zone is finally averted? Will a doomsday, Hitler-style regime seize the proud nation on the verge of bankruptcy if forces occultes press too far2091? What about a new European war? “The circumstances seem changed but the cliche is in one's psyche”; that's an ongoing romantic comedy or action movie shtick.
The romantic comedy -or thriller, for those who can tell the differenceTV ambiance is obvious. The world peeps aghast as EU executive Juncker refuses a phone call from Greek Prime Minister Tsipras 2092: even U.S President Obama seems to fear a global economic catastrophe looming on the horizon.
Readers can almost hear the appropriate soundtrack of this third-rate cable TV drama that had already unfolded nearly verbatim in the past: Iceland, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Portugal, Argentina...In all those cases, the routine “unforeseen
development”;
the
“accidental
revelation”;
the
“ill-timed
misunderstanding”; the “shocking wording” none could foresee seem surgically timed so that the usual suspects may make a profit on the stock market.
Irrespective of the many good objections to this overload of third rate sentimentalism, in some milieus is it common to retort that -whatever might be 2091
That's the same image of the psychotic who threatens to jump from a balcony, or to kill an hostage if his demands are not met. The Zoroastrian choice shtick has never been healthier. 2092 ANSA, June 8, 2015.
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wrong, excessive or objectionable in at least some occurrences- it serves -all things considered- the noble or ethical purpose of psychical surgery that is supposed -according to some- to prevent yet another outburst of collective sparagmos.
Irrespective of any modest side-effects, pencil-necked sweat-hogs, prigs and dolts thus trained would be 'mentally castrated' to such an extent to exceed prevention, and to frankly render any such occurrence impossible.
For example, no matter how often so-called gypsies (Rom or any other designation) or people of color show up in crime statistics or crime journalism, one is not authorized to 'connect the dots', but shall withdraw into speculations about quantum entanglement, synchronicity, six degrees of separation, the butterfly effect of inequality and '...ism', and suchlike: there is a nice explanation that shall change your opinion entirely.
Should evil eyes and shame shamanism fail to deter, lawyers are ready to serve those who refuse to comply.
Lenin believed that Marxism cannot be generated naturally among the proletariat, but must be infused from outside. Lenin tried his best but still could not cause workers to shift from the economic struggle to the political battle for power. So he pinned his hopes on the Conditioned Reflex Theory put forth by Nobel Prize winner Ivan Petrovich Pavlov [whom Lenin visited in 1919]. Lenin said this theory "has significant meaning for the proletariat all around the world." Trotsky' even vainly hoped that conditioned reflex would not only psychologically change a person. but also physically change the person. In the same way that a dog drools once it hears the lunch bell ringing, soldiers would be expected to rush ahead bravely upon hearing gunshots, 1651
thus devoting their lives to the Communist Party. (Epoch Group 2004:99). The Pavlovs had been repeatedly rousted by local authorities familiar with their White sympathies, and the Bolshevik leadership had apparently even suggested that they leave the country. But now, in 1920, with victory over the Whites imminent, Lenin pondered the challenges of “socialist construction� and considered Pavlov a national treasure. (Todes 2014:421, emphasis added). Nevertheless, sentimentalism was very much alive and trendy during the period that preceded the First World War, and between wars. Much as it's fashionable to draw lines between today's sentimentalism in its many provinces, and what it used to be like back then, it remains equally true that pacifism, internationalism, positivism, globalism, humanism and the many provinces of sentimentalism were not much effective in preventing neither world wars, nor a host of regional wars.
As professor Hawenbeck (Wirth's colleague in the establishment of NSDAP SS Ahnenerbe) puts it, the NSDAP youth section -and the SS Ahnenerbewas a continuation of German romanticism:
The [ U.S] revolutionary faith was shaped not so much by the critical rationalism of the French Enlightenment ( as is generally believed ) as by the occultism and proto-romanticism of Germany. This faith was incubated in France during the revolutionary era within a small subculture of literary intellectuals who were immersed in journalism, fascinated by secret societies , and subsequently infatuated with "ideologies" as a secular surrogate for religious belief. -...-If Freemasonry provided a general milieu and symbolic vocabulary for revolutionary organization , it was Illuminism that provided its basic structural model. The organizational plan that Buonarroti distilled from two decades of 1652
revolutionary experience in Geneva ( and basically remained faithful to for the rest of his life ) was simply lifted from the Bavarian Order of Illuminists. (Billington 1980:3-4,93). Whereas the Founding Fathers of this great Nation [= United States] and signers of the Constitution, most of whom were Freemasons, provided a well-rounded basis for developing themselves and others into valuable citizens of the United States (Resolution 33, 110th U.S Congress, Jan. 5, 2007, emphasis added). Atheism and the Enlightenment go together, like milk and cookies (M.S. Roth2093). Sentimentalism was equally very alive in the XVIII century, yet that didn't avert the revolutionary catastrophe. Today overexposure kicked in. Those who might speak out of just ethical concerns suffer an aggressive competition from popcorn philosophers, vegan activists, former Soviet enthusiasts transited to campaign for ecology and climate, animal rights crusaders, prophets of doom, hoaxers and mythomaniacs of all walks of life; mythicists, new agers, exotic gurus of all persuasions; the advert guy and the public relations gal hired by the fast food chain, the tobacco company, or the malt liquor brand.
The emphasis on sentimentality, vitalism (superman theories) 2094, on trusting one's emotion beyond any idea of consistency, on the often questionable nature of mainstream truth, on elusive “truths beyond rational comprehension� that united
transcendentalism
and
romanticism
drifted
beyond
transcendentalism (abolitionism, contemplative naturalism etc).
2093 2094
Professor of History and Humanities. It won't elude readers how this is just the arch-trickster in his incarnation as culture hero.
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progressive
Mussolini -for one- explicitly lampooned the priggish notion of consistency in favor of reckless eclecticism (=political expediency). Ahead lied industrialized social Darwinism as State policy; the war-welfare State; Nietzsche's will to power, whose idea of superman Fascist and Social-Communist regimes quickly appropriated.
Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman. (L. Trotsky, Literature And Revolution, 1925, Strunsky trans.). CEKA-NKVD and GESTAPO thugs rounding opponents up for elimination were not far in the future as Jacobin thugs were not far in the past. They, too, endeavored to “to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life ”2095.
Alternatively,
feminists
such
as
B.
Walker
can
swiftly
join
transcendentalism with neo-pagan suggestions, and a version of feminism that urges the recapture of a long-gone achronotopos when friendly matriarchies ruled peaceful societies where nurturance was the norm, and violence and sexism (=the absolute wrongdoing in this case) were absent or banned.
That's very common. Chinese Pure Land teachings claim that whenever a land adopts the Buddha's correct teachings:”“There will be no need for soldiers or
2095
Walden, Thoreau 1854:no page.
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weapons.” There will be no wars.”2096, just as Gimbutas, Eisler and their lot claim about European neolithic matriarchy.
The concept is immemorial. Beata Vita (blessed life) was a common horizon in Roman political parlance (Cicero, Seneca). It transited to mean “homeland security” (Securitas, also a goddess) under the Empire: a perception of ongoing safety of the social body. Citizens could “be devoid of care” (se-cura) as the State (Securitas with the cornucopia of abundance) kept welfare provisions in place.
Walker also claims a mind-boggling (9 million 2097) number of women
2096 2097
Wuling, February 10, 2013. Walker 2006. Professor Plaisted (with the department of computer science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ) traces this ongoing bingo back to the XVIII century in works by “Conyers Middleton lived from 1683 to 1750 and in 1729 wrote his “Letter from Rome, Showing an Exact Conformity between Popery and Paganism.” He was a rationalistic theologian, and denied the occurrence of miracles in the church. ” (2006:50), and “Gottfried Christian Voigt(1740-1791) ”. Plaisted clinches:”Therefore the figure of 9 million witches killed also has a source and was not made up. From these two examples it is possible to infer Middleton’s approach: All of the figures he gave were obtained from another source. None of the figures were increased; in fact some of them may even have been reduced. Even the figure of 30,000,000 Mexicans and Peruvians killed, for which we do not have a source, is not too far off from the estimate of 15 million given by Schmucker, cited above.” (no date:51). He gleefully adds: “Some say that these high death toll figures are tinged by anti-Catholicism. One could just as well say that arguments against these figures are tinged by pro-Catholicism. ” (ibid.:52). Readers shall come to their own conclusions. The same shtick recurs with a quotation attributed to Trotsky. The Bolshevik leader would have written:”If we win the revolution, we shall establish the power of Zionism upon the wreckage of the revolution’s funeral”. This hypothetical quotation seems to substantiate the idea of a Judaeo-Bolshevik “master plan” that was all the rage in the 1920-40s. Too bad it is impossible to verify this quote: Russian author Stepin gives a doubtful chain of authentication, but a number of right-wing radicals present the quote as fact (= political expediency):“If you tell the same story five times, it’s true.” (White House spokesman Speakes in 1983). Politicized cronies cite the item, often without proper attribution, in order to lend credibility to the “multiple attestation” of an originally individual source of dubious value that instantly becomes “a fact documented by many” according to unspecified “historical records”:”We know the answers because someone shared them with us. Communication is a kind of “vicarious observation””;”what later became the gist of the tradition was not in fact an accurate memory, but one that had been generated as the stories were told and retold”. Urban legends spread likewise. The chain of authentication for the story of this local U.S customer -whom everybody knew yet still unnamed- who either died, or had an arm amputated because of the poisonous sting of some animal nested into imported foreign goods went thus:”“My brother is a doctor,” another caller explained. “He’s on the staff at Baylor Hospital and he was present when they brought the woman in.” Baylor Hospital said it also had no such case on record. Neither did the police or the health department. The doctor was questioned, he said it wasn’t actually he who was present but a friend. The friend explained he wasn’t present either, he had just overheard two nurses talking about it.” (Brunvand 1981:95).
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were executed as witches. This number possibly first appeared out of thin air in a 1893 book by suffragist and neo-pagan author Mathilda Gage (she speaks of “nine millions of persons”2098); a claim neo-pagan thinker and activist Gardner 2099 borrowed, in turn meant to apply to “women” for Walker and her ilk (such as German author and “magical feminist” Luisa Francia): (academic) cronyism (=information cascade) at its zenith (or nadir).
Points of contact between Transcendentalists and -to name one- the NSDAP regime are too many to count. Much as people like Marcuse would like, disentangling enlightenment and terror may prove either impossible or futile. Let's pick vegetarianism, for example2100:
Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized. ( Walden, Thoreau 1854:no page). But there's one thing I can predict to eaters of meat, that the world of the future will be vegetarian ! (Hitler in November 1941 (point 66) cit. in Cameron &Stevens 2000). I'm a vegetarian, and they must spare me from their meat. ( Hitler in January 1942 (point 105), Ibid. 2098
“It is computed from historical records that nine millions of persons were put to death for witchcraft after 1484, or during a period of three hundred years, and this estimate does not include the vast number who were sacrificed in the preceding centuries upon the same accusation.” (1893:247). She mentions “historical records” but fails to specify which ones. Her book is a theosophical jumble of Belle Epoque motifs that clearly supplies a blueprint for the 'scientific' mother goddess fads of later decades. 2099 “How many perished in the witch-mania throughout Western Europe, in the whole of its long course, will probably never be known; they are estimated to number nine millions.” (Gardner 1959:34). 2100 Some in the vegetarian community have risen indignantly against this juxtaposition. They contend Hitler's vegetarianism was a marketing ploy, a myth engineered to foster the image of Hitler – and other NSDAP honchos- as mystical and compassionate. The present writer lets Hitler speak for himself.
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When I became a vegetarian, a mouthful of water from time to time was enough. When you offer a child the choice of a piece of meat, an apple or a cake, it's never the meat that he chooses. (Hitler in January 1942 (point 117), Ibid. I am no admirer of the poacher, particularly as I am a vegetarian; but in him I see the sole element of romance in the so-called sport of shooting. (Hitler in August 1942 (point 293), Ibid.). "[Daniel said] Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. -...-At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead. ( Daniel 1:12-16). Heinrich Himmler was a certified animal rights activist and an aggressive promoter of "natural healing." Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy, championed homeopathy and herbal remedies. Hitler and his advisers dedicated hours of their time to discussions of the need to move the entire nation to vegetarianism as a response to the unhealthiness promoted by capitalism. Dachau hosted the world's largest alternative and organic medicine research lab and produced its own organic honey. In profound ways, the Nazi antismoking and public health drives foreshadowed today's crusades against junk food, trans fats, and the like. A Hitler Youth manual proclaimed, "Nutrition is not a private matter!"--a mantra substantially echoed by the public health establishment today.(Goldberg 2007:16). Transcendentalist and activist Mary Peabody wrote in 1858 Christianity
In The Kitchen, linking proper attention to nutrition to moral implications. “Metabolic practices� are a way to trigger synchronicities of mystical import: as above, so below. Metabolic practices (fasting, dietary laws or taboos...) are a way to align oneself with heterogeneous time, sacred time that transcends the homogeneous time of everyday life.
Organic food was inextricably linked to what the Nazis then 1657
described--as the left does today--as "social justice" issues. (Goldberg 2007:16). Millennia before, Taoist Nei-Yeh (inward training, IV century BCE) advises in keeping with Taoism alchemy:
For all the Way of eating is that: Overfilling yourself with food will impair your vital energy And cause your body to deteriorate. Overrestricting your consumption causes the bones to wither And the blood to congeal. The mean between overfilling and overrestricting:This is called "harmonious completion." It is where the vital essence lodges And knowledge is generated. (point n.23, H. Roth translation). De Sade had already delivered in the late XVIII century a cargo of such ideas in his depictions of the fictional utopia of Tamoé, a paradise island in the southern seas2101. Some Jewish rabbis interpret the Bible to give a vegetarian diet priority: after all, before the fall, Adam and Eve consumed only vegetarian food in the garden of Eden while enjoying god's company. So did Seventh-Day Adventist 2101
Here Sade describes a meal at the palace of Zamé, the divine philosopher-king of the paradise island of Tamoé. Zamé then explains that a vegetarian diet is the staple of a healthy lifestyle “jattes d'une superbe porcelaine bleue du Japon, uniquement remplies de légumes, de confitures, de fruits et de pâtisserie.—Le plus mauvais petit prince d'Allemagne fait meilleure chère que moi, n'est-ce pas mon ami, me dit Zamé. Voulez-vous savoir pourquoi? C'est qu'il nourrit son orgueil beaucoup plus que son estomac, et qu'il imagine qu'il y a de la grandeur et de la magnificence à faire assommer vingt bêtes pour en substanter une. Ma vanité se place à des objets différens: être cher à ses concitoyens, être aimé de ceux qui l'entourent, faire le bien, empêcher le mal, rendre tout le monde heureux, voilà les seules choses, mon ami, qui doivent flatter la vanité de celui que le hasard met un moment au-dessus des autres. Ce n'est point par aucun principe religieux que nous nous abstenons de viande, c'est par régime, c'est par humanité: pourquoi sacrifier nos frères quand la nature nous donne autre chose? Peut-on croire, d'ailleurs, qu'il soit bon D'engloutir dans ses entrailles la chair et le sang putréfiés de mille animaux divers; il ne peut résulter de-là qu'un chile âcre, qui détériore nécessairement nos organes, qui les affaiblit, qui précipite les infimités et hâte la mort. Mais les comestibles que je vous offre n'ont aucuns de ces inconvéniens: les fumées que leur digestion renvoie au cerveau sont légères, et les fibres n'en sont jamais ébranlées. ” (Sade no date: no page). Chinese Pure Land Buddhist monastic Wuling tells the same thing: perennial philosophy:”Let’s look at animals. When an animal is being killed by a human, would it be very happy about it? No. It is just that the animal is unable to resist! In addition, with extreme anger, how can it not become poisonous? Therefore, when one eats meat over a long period of time, poison will accumulate in one’s body. When the poison takes effect, one will have strange diseases. As it is said, “Illness enters through the mouth.” If we wish for good health and longevity, we should start to have a vegetarian diet. ” (January 18, 2013).
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co-founder Ellen G. White: her prophetic warnings thunder in favor of vegetarianism that ought to reduce the appetites of the flesh. If religions propose mystical meals and permissible food lists conducive to spiritual uplift or salvation, online junk banners propose to lose 1kg per day eating some 'secret' food according to 'ancient', long-lost recipes.
Fernandez-Armesto magisterially evokes the deeply ideological resonance behind food fads and alternative styles:
Mealtimes are our oldest rituals. The companionable effects of eating together help to make us human. The little links which bind households together are forged at the table. The stability of our homes probably depends more on regular mealtimes than on sexual fidelity or filial piety. Now it is in danger. Food is being desocialised. The demise of mealtimes means unstructured days and undisciplined appetites. The loneliness of the fast-food eater is uncivilising. In microwave households, family life fragments. The end of home cooking has long been both tearfully predicted and ardently desired. The anti-cooking movement started, rather feebly, more than 100 years ago, among socialists who wanted to liberate women from the kitchen and replace the family with a wider community. In 1887, Edward Bellamy imagined a paradise of kitchenless homes. Workers would order dinner from menus printed in newspapers and eat them in people's palaces. Twenty years later, Charlotte Perkins wanted to make cookery "scientific": in effect, eliminating it from most lives, while professionals in meal-making factories maintained energy levels for a world of work. It would have been insufferably dull - institutional eating can never beat home cooking. But at least it was nobly conceived, with socialising effects in mind. Now capitalism has succeeded where socialism failed. We are facing a nightmare version of Perkins' vision: a dystopia in which cooking has surrendered to "convenience" and family break-ups start at the fridge. The eateries Bellamy imagined have materialised but they are supplied by private enterprise in fast-food outlets, serving uniform pabulum. (2002:no page). Suggestions that a proper manipulation of food intake -breath and all the 1659
rest- could impact one's spiritual ascent were the staple of oriental doctrines ( Hinduism, Taoism...) being gradually “in the air� in the west since the late XVIII century as readers saw with Sade: a first English translation of Hindu Gita appeared in 1785.
Also, freemasonry, theosophy and related spiritualist doctrines endorsed versions of such alchemical strategies of spiritual uplift that -as previously seenincluded such a diverse cohort of luminaries as Hebrew, Hindu or Taoist sages, De Sade (XVIII century), transcendentalists, NSDAP honchos, Soviet-funded green or race activists, frisky hippies, animal rights busybodies and so forth.
Another thread that links Transcendentalism to the NSDAP -or any other ideological regime for the matter- is exorbitant eccentricity taking off in all possible directions. If the NSDAP regime had a mystical fringe, so did Transcendentalism. Jones Very (1813-80) was a transcendentalist of an atypical lifestyle. He claimed to have been chosen by god -just as Jordan Maxwell and David Icke claim extraterrestrials chose them-; to converse with the almighty -much as President George Bush, Jr. and General Amin claimed-, and was committed to a lunatic asylum for a period -much as NSDAP mystic honcho Weisthor2102 would be-.
In 1930 British physical culture periodical Superman2103 appeared, ornate 2102
Karl Maria Willigut, known under various pseudonyms, was a colonel in the Austrian army during WWI. Convinced he possessed mystical powers (which he credited to his mythologized Aryan origin) and involved in all sorts of 'occult' pursuits and investigations, is referred to as prominent member of the SS along with allpowerful leader Himmler (also convinced he was the reincarnation of King Of Germany Henry The Fowler, 876-936 ). It is also said Willigut was behind the runic inscriptions on the mandatory SS ring. 2103 The eponymous U.S comic book character was created by Siegel&Schuster in 1933, and was acquired by DC
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with swastikas, a symbol that was all the rage worldwide until the NSDAP downfall;
Superman -well before Hitler's ascent to power- also discussed eugenics and “racial hygiene”.
The idea of superman was still around well after WWII. In 1969, Aurobindo's sidekick (Mirra Alfassa of Jewish background) and successor proclaimed the realization of “superman consciousness”. Mormon theology still opens the possibility of becoming gods in the afterlife. Aurobindo himself had prophesied the advent of “the supramental species” on earth, imbued with divine consciousness: Darwinian projections.
Theosophical dregs are ubiquitous: Rudolf Steiner's heritage survives in his proprietary pedagogical style. Reference to Steiner's key role in the Theosophical Society, or his capacity as esotericist (of the anti-nationalist kind 2104) are conveniently forgotten. Acclaimed Jiddu Krishnamurti was in fact the embodied, botched attempt Theosophists had made to craft a living god to fulfill disparate and abstruse 'prophecies' of one kind or another. Aurobindo would plot a similar trajectory -through the nationalist node, however- towards becoming -for some at least- a sort of world teacher preaching theosophical doctrines.
A similar concept recurs in Christian Pentecostalism: a constellation of
2104
Comics in 1938. Steiner and other Germans left the Theosophical Society when the Society announced Indian Krishnamurti was the savior (world teacher). Racialist preoccupations and anti-nationalism (the NSDAP attacked Steiner) could co-exist.
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fast-growing denominations that equally preach miracles, spiritual descents 2105, and fabulous gifts. This time the transcendental entity that descends is the Christian Holy Ghost, and not some fancy theosophical construction, in turn the posh
doppelgaenger of the various mystical Chi (China), Num (Ju people of the Kalahari), Musubi (Japan), Mana ( Pacific island cultures), Haché (Afro-Cuban Santeria), Prana (India), Pneuma (Ancient Greece), Ain Sof (Hebrew Kabbalah) etc...
The distinguishing marks of Pentecostalism appeared around the globe—in Wales, Korea, and India—during the first few years of the twentieth century and popped up in Kansas in 1900. But Pentecostalism’s origins are typically traced to April 1906 and a small black church on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. At a series of interracial revivals led by a one-eyed black Holiness preacher named William Joseph Seymour (1870–1922), Christians began to pray, sing, and speak in languages they did not recognize. Many believed that the “gifts of the Spirit” they witnessed at Azusa Street were signs that they were living in the “last days” when God had promised to “pour out my Spirit upon all flesh” (Acts 2:17, RSV)—a belief made compelling when San Francisco’s Great Earthquake erupted in the midst of the bedlam. The Azusa Street revival, as it is now called, went on to exhibit for years the sort of sacred power that the Yoruba refer to as ashe. -...-One source of Pentecostalism’s success is its ability to address both thisworldly and otherworldly concerns. Another is its ability to abide simultaneously in the pragmatic present and the biblical past. Like evangelicals and fundamentalists, Pentecostals view the Bible as the inspired Word of God, evangelize with gusto, and respond to the challenge of death by preaching personal salvation through faith in Jesus. But Pentecostals also attend to the challenge of human flourishing by promising health and wealth here and now. Especially in the Third World, they offer deliverance from demons and witches, and their strict rules about drinking, gambling, and womanizing have improved the lives of women worldwide, while putting more disposable income in the pockets of Pentecostal families. -...-Whereas Luther liberated Christians from what had become for many a tyranny of good works, Pentecostalism liberates Christians 2105
Even in traditional Hindu thought, avatarhood (=descending spirit) is the quality of many savior-heroes such as Vishnu's incarnations Rama and Krishna: “the birth of the divine” (Savardekar, MAISI014: audio lecture 4).
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from the tyranny of belief, which, after the Enlightenment, has become a straitjacket for many. (Prothero 2010:37). Transcendentalists had written:
In the language of the school, it is a free intuition, and can only be attained by a vigorous effort of the will.� (Hedge 1833, cit. in Myerson 2000:88). Choice implies apostacy. The pure, unfallen soul is above choice. Her life is unbroken, synthetic; she is a law to herself, and finds no lust in her members warring against the instincts of conscience. Sinners choose; saints act from instinct and intuition: there is no parley of alien forces in their being. (A.B. Alcott 1840, cit. in Myerson 2000:302). Although, as we have said, there is no pure Transcendentalist, yet the tendency to respect the intuitions, and to give them, at least in our creed, all authority over our experience, has deeply colored the conversation and poetry of the present day; and the history of genius and of religion in these times, though impure, and as yet not incarnated in any powerful individual, will be the history of this tendency. (Emerson 1841, cit. in Myerson 2000:371). Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? -...-Trust your emotion. -...- A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. (Emerson 1841, cit. in Myerson 2000:324). My commitment is to truth not consistency (Gandhi). I do not believe in erecting statues to those who still live in our hearts, whose bones have not yet crumbled in the earth around us, but I would rather see the statue of Captain Brown [a violent abolitionist, whose abolitionist expeditions left several people dead; he held views similar to Most's “propaganda of the deed�] in the Massachusetts State-House yard, than that of any other man whom I know. -...- I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable. ( A Plea, Thoreau 1859: no page). 1663
Fernandez-Armesto quips:
In Nietzsche’s moral universe, the man who seizes power is a superior man. For Nietzsche, all women were inherently inferior. Will becomes more important than reason or virtue, and goodness disappears. According to Nietzsche, goodness is a false notion. Moreover, truth disappears. According to Nietzsche, all truth is illusory—he solved the problem of defining truth by asserting it did not exist. The only reality is self-fulfillment. Anger, lust, hatred, all these things become virtuous in the kind of new morality that he proposed. And the person who succeeds in imposing his will on others becomes a natural leader whom everyone should follow, the leader whom Nietzsche calls the “superman.” (2004:65). Again, transcendentalist Elizabeth Peabody propelled the kindergarten movement in the USA from the 1850s onwards: public kindergartens as a measure to counter social ills in impoverished neighborhoods. The transcendentalist full of noble intentions, whose gums bleed for mankind, suspiciously rubs elbows with another row of elated proponents of compulsory, extended public schooling: the crooners of Belle Epoque nation-States eager to put the diverse jumble of creeds, origins and allegiances that constituted the citizenry through the food processor of public education. Third-rate collective narcissism was thus injected into the social body to macadamize it: “everybody is special”; “no child left behind” etc.
Another group loomed on the horizon: totalitarian regimes that ranged across the political spectrum from Communist Bolsheviks to Chiang Kai-Shek's Chinese nationalists (a mixture of Confucianism and European Fascism), and Fascist regimes generalissimo Chang opposed allied to the USA.
While the workers in their paradise queued up for hours in order to 1664
jockey for the possession of scarce essentials, Soviet Communist bureaucrats, for example, stocked posh top-shelf goods up from the unfair, decadent West through venues assertedly seen as a condescending concession to tourists and foreign dignitaries; high-ranking Soviet bureaucrats were also entitled to differential treatment in matters of housing, healthcare etc.
Furthermore, just a few years ago2106 - offhand opinion leaders could argue extensively over the Internet in favor of “nuking the frogs”, “ass-grabbing Russia” and other trailer park and ale house surrogates of top-shelf propaganda. Others posted pictures of missiles and other weapons with (often obscene) taunts directed mostly at Muslims in general.
More recently, T-shirts for sale invited to arrange a meeting between the Taliban and their god; or to catch two birds with one stone by killing pregnant Muslim women in the Middle East. Earlier still, footage exists of 'good guys' painting ribald slogans and insults on ammunition destined to civilian cities or the enemy.
What on one side is the rambunctious enthusiasm of the righteous, on the enemy's side amounts to sadism, which in turn constitutes a notarized proof of one's 'mental illness'. It is enough to ponder that similar public exhortations in different circumstances (='the opposite' might be the case at any time) might lead 2106
When Russia, France, China and other countries strongly objected to the American intervention in Iraq, which was alternatively designed as peace-keeping, counter-violence, freedom export or invasion. The fact that American citizens could advocate to subject the biggest contributor to U.S independence to a nuclear attack says all.
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one in front of the courts in many jurisdictions under some '...ism censorship' law, statute or provision, not to the gilded podium of the incensed patriot.
Such childish outlook constitutes -at least in theory- the golden rule in the inner sanctum of today's popular morality: such and such belief, attitude, political party and so forth do not belong in polite company because 'you-knowwho' might cry, sulk, ire, agonize mentally or -broadly put- resent it whichever the way. An impassioned mountebank might suggest that refusing to pass the next special law or not celebrating the next atonement ritual right away would amount to doing you-know-what to you-know-who a second time:”Thus the death and ‘raising up’ of Jesus was a myth: it had happened once to Jesus, and was now happening all the time.”2107.
No wonder human mind's vortexes are at work, if we consider ritual human sacrifices such as the Lindow Man, who -in the I century CE- was quite literally murdered multiple times. Of course, even the various atheist and lefty Khmer Rouge, Bolshevik or Jacobin regimes made a series of 'you-know-who' cry, sulk and agonize. The opposite there chances to apply, however, for victims were imperialist swines, greedy hoarders, royalist apparatchiki, bourgeois oppressors, anti-national intellectuals, religionist conspirators who had it coming, or so the story went...the precious human soul and its incoherence.
The opposite that applies can, of course, be anything and everything. 2107
Armstrong 2005:42.
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The Russian self-proclaimed “punk feminist” militant rock group Pussy Riot sung in a Russian cathedral a protest song with political overtones targeting the Putin regime. Apprehended and tried on the basis of a law targeting hatred on the basis of religion, they soon became the heroes of a diverse universe of indignant western drones and their high-placed chorus leaders.
The arrest was unanimously exposed as a political machination; 'antihate' laws were pilloried as fig leaves for an oppressive government's misdeeds; free speech was lionized.
Eric Zemmour's2108 earlier case -to name just one- failed to
rally such an impressive cohort of free speech proponents and conspiracy theorists, however.
Cases like this are innumerable. In 2014, GLBT activist and singer Wainright is invited to join -for a hefty fee- musical event Festival Di Sanremo on the Italian State TV financed with taxes levied from all taxpayers: lefty anchormen salute Wainright's “classy pop”. Rumors circulate the histrionic singer might deliver a performance of his hit “gay messiah” where Jesus, baptism and sperm are commingled in pornographic imagery2109.
In spite of legal prohibitions in place against “religious hatred”, lefties, homophiles and progressives champion freedom of speech, and denounce intolerance. The opposite might chance to apply as always. Biracial French The Jewish-French journalist was in fact sentenced on the basis on a law targeting “incitement to racial discrimination” for his televised declaration to the effect that “La plupart des trafiquants sont noirs et arabes ” [Most drug dealers are Blacks and Arabs] as Le Monde reported on March 16, 2010. 2109 Il Giornale, February 16, 2014. 2108
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comedian Dieudonné has been targeted with an endless stream of legal actions, threats and prohibitions since he ignited a polemic with the Jewish community years back: freedom of speech is never a good excuse to go that far.
An illegal immigrant from Ghana is caught on tape as he savagely murders three people with a pickaxe in Milan. Forensic experts pronounce him mentally ill as the trial unfolds: what happened to him could happen to anyone. Others champion the frail soul, as tainted as we all are, claiming images on tape aren't very clear, and so forth. The frail soul declares that he hears voices in his head to the effect that “Whites made me what I am” 2110, thus exposing opponents to the transgression of a beloved taboo: “ mos requires neither deliberation, nor judgment, but praise or blame”.
Simon2111 aptly explains that disturbed individuals sidetrack objections to their aggressive behavior by transporting people to “another time and place” (the
illud tempus shtick). Murdering people with a pickaxe may be very bad, but once meek Congoids suffering under the thumb of White '...ists' appear, prigs and dolts melt away as they hand everyone a 'free pass' in existential rapture of oneness: we “owe them just that much”.
A weird genetic makeup can also be hold as proof that “nature made me do it”:
2110 2111
Notizie.Tiscali.it 30 January 2014. 2011:013.
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What might have been the civil rights establishment’s worst nightmare occurred in December 1993, when Colin Ferguson, a black man of Jamaican ancestry, deliberately shot and killed six white passengers and wounded 19 others on a Long Island railroad commuter train. It was clearly a "hate crime," for Ferguson raged at black "uncle Toms" and carried notes on his person expressing his hatred toward white people. Ferguson has been indicted on 93 counts, including civil rights violation. Black spokesman Jesse Jackson immediately went into damage control, expressing fear of a “backlash" and preaching a message of healing and reconciliation. -...-Ferguson was portrayed in the media as a victim of white racism on the one hand, and as a victim of mental illness on the other. Had he been a white man who had killed six black people solely because of their race, we might still be hearing about it. In the meantime, however, the story has disappeared from the news. (Wilcox 1994:25). A man murders his roommate (January 2014) with an ax in the Italian province of Pistoia. Years earlier, the same man (G.Lotti) had clubbed his fiancee to death; Lotti had already gone through the justice system for robberies and vandalism. Pronounced mentally ill, he had served only 6 year prison term, and was currently on parole at a rehabilitation center as psychiatric reports had recommended. The magic show of the justice system can only point out how Lotti was apparently keeping up well with the rehabilitation program.
The tenors of the 'great ideals' would go down in flames rather than repudiating their sublime values. That is what the NSDAP regime did in Berlin (Hamburg, Dresden...); what Castro was ready to do at the height of the missile crisis (October 1962); what the Israeli government considered doing by pondering a possible nuclear strike against foreign threats in 1967, 1973, 1991 and in very recent
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times against Iran2112.
Even Bokassa, the Central-African dictator (1966-79),
clamored he needed atomic weaponry to defend the noble nation.
The opposite might apply at all times, though. A speedy sentence (13 months) meted out within weeks to minor Lega Nord politician (Italy) who had insulted a State minister of color online. That's an intolerable crime that only 'that kind of person' might commit:”Power is a cover-up for shame”.
Drout melts in delight:
But the pathos of the tears in the eyes of [M.L.] King’s daughter is what pulls the entire piece together, and to my mind, at that moment, early in the letter, King had already won the argument. Everything works (logos, ethos, and pathos) and the argument performs the highest function that rhetoric can perform: to convince a hostile and unwilling audience of something that is not merely what the speaker wants, but which is, in the much larger sense of the world, true. (2006:45, emphasis added). One might wonder how well would another such cargo of melodrama fare today: children who have to avoid certain neighborhoods at certain times because of rampant crime, and people know already who's taking the lion's share in crime statistics. Both are facts (=injustice because of segregation; unsafe neighborhoods because of crime), yet the riposte to this hypothetical glurge scene would probably be an invitation to have one's mental health assessed while a mortally offended lawyer serves us.
Alternatively, a nice scholarly work might detail how ”Refusing to -...2112
Haaretz, October 7, 2010.
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[remedy] underlying social conditions, we are forced instead to make increasing private investments in physical security ”2113. Rac(ial)ist groups howling about the future of White children are probably committing an offense actionable in several jurisdictions: end of the story.
Atheists, lefties and progressives hope that religionists move out of the way with their bibles, and their scourged saviors moaning in agony: it's all a folkloric intoxication validated through schizotypal fantasies of redemptive suffering. Religionists wish that atheists, lefties and progressives would move out of the way with their grievance-shopping Africans, women, illegal immigrants and homosexuals.
Lefties, atheists and progressives may typically retort that so-and-so really suffered so much that in all fairness we owe them so much...which is precisely what the religionist claimed all along with his scourged saviors, rejected prophets with a beard, and slaughtered martyrs. What is fair for the goose is not fair for the gander, apparently: Drout's oracle is not completely convincing.
Drout seems also unaware -or worse: he pretends to be unaware- that M.L. King plagiarized parts2114 from his famous “I have a dream” speech from a 1952 speech another Black preacher, A. Carey, gave at the Republican Convention. Hitler uttered an “I have a dream” speech as well well before Carey, although those dreams were very different in nature. 2113 2114
Davis: Pile, Brooks&Mooney 1999:142ss In the specific the portion “let freedom ring”.
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The movie Street Fighter (1994) gives another perfect example of the dominant infantilism, even if we excuse the laughable premises of a movie based on a video game. Earlier in the movie, two youngsters consider joining arch-dictator on a world domination binge. The 'good guys' bring them to a hospital and shown weeping mommies, disembodies kiddies, defaced innocents etc: there is no excuse for going that far, no matter what (or the 'if...then' strategy reversed) any ideology might say2115. Their amygdala (mirror-neurons or any other such item), or the area of the brain responsible for empathy feedback-loops by 'making us feel what the other does', probably grows as big as a basket ball: they thus decide to join the the 'good guys' instead after all. Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Davidson2116 qualifies “empathy� (=feeling what the other does) as depleting and toxic.
This -of course!- works only with ' the bad guy over there's regime'. Any attempt to reverse the polarity will result in equal parts of laughter, angry stares and possibly lawfare. Pictures? People have been faking those for ages. Videos? We all watched The Matrix movies...just because it's on film does not mean it's true. News 2115
This dead horse has been beaten to death over and over. The concept of penultimacy -according to German theologian Bonhoffer executed in 1945 for opposing the NSDAP regime- is but another restyling of teleological concerns: no matter what the perceived reasons or possible goals might be, there are supreme spheres (for Bonhoffer: god as the ultimate sphere) that must not be traspassed into, lest Statolatry (NSDAP policies Bonhoffer opposed) unfold. For Bonhoffer, radicals represent ultimacy, or the negation of penultimacy; in other words, another restatement of the deontology/teleology divide. Only Yahweh can send premonitory thunderclaps, incinerate cities or obliterate humankind with a flood. Of course, a nice Dalai Lama, Ayatollah, Church President or Pope might be on call to let the masses know whether the thunderclap might mean god (dis)approves of anything in pursuit of greater goods. Penultimacy can be understood alongside Voegelin's (ens) realissimum (most real thing), or supreme reality as either god, or divine ground. Theravada Buddhist abbot Aggacitta reveals that when the Taliban regime destroyed the famous giant Buddha statues, it rained. Buddhists interpreted such natural events as meaning the gods were crying over the blasphemous act, whereas Muslims interpreted rain as god's auspicious approval of steps taken against idolaters. 2116 2017.
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releases? Those guys work freelance for everybody...for so many dollars an hour. Witnesses? Do we mean people with an ax to grind, who have a stake in the debate, or just simple actors? None is worth their salt: their stories are full of holes anyways. Emotional agony? Truth makes no allowance for crooks: schizophrenics should be talking to a shrink while wearing straitjackets, not haranguing the crowds wearing medals. Moral lessons? But everybody knows it's a smear campaign by this, that or another group, which has proved itself through history to be just that vicious. Is the evidence irrefutable for once? Well, what they did was possibly wrong but terribly romantic in the defense of the best of all possible regimes or causes; as 'divine' Robespierre said, one is expected to break some eggs in order to make an omelet.
Later in the Street Fighter movie, the murderous dictator captures 'good guy', and wants to turn him into a monster on his service. Chemical transfusions will transform his body and -very original indeed- circular footage of Adolf Hitler and random acts of violence ( epitomized by a growing red upload band) will transform his mind. That continues until a turncoat switches to circular footage of random soothing images interspersed with Martin Luther King's speeches: the upload bar turns blue so that the 'good guy' remains good.
Another great piece comes in the end. An oaf on the dictator's service is told how his master is peace's real enemy. He got mercenaries on his service only because he pays them, whereas good people from all over the world have come (=
congredi motif) to stop the carnage.
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It would be simple to dismiss it all as more or less cheap movie-making, yet the explanation of the situation throughout the fall of Libyan dictator Gaddafi followed a very similar script according to international media. There are indications the same teleplay is endlessly replayed at the behest of forces occultes, as courtesy demands: Egypt, Ukraine, Syria, Tunisia...
Wrestling supplies handy comparisons again. In 1988, Black wrestler Bad News Brown -an irascible Harlem thug character- picked a fight with his own team member Greg Valentine after being accidentally hit, then went back to the dressing room in disgust. The scene was so much in favor that Bad News Brown carboncopied it in 1989 irascibly picking a fight with team member Big Boss Man. How many times did Hulk Hogan agonize on the canvas, just to recover speedily in order to win in a matter of seconds? Didn't countless others -such as the Ultimate Warrior- copy the routine, much as Hogan was patently imitating Superstar Billy Graham?
Leaders of the 'bad' regimes (of the day, of course) and their henchmen shall be physically eliminated and exposed to public execration because -no matter their excuse- they went too far. Leaders of 'good' regimes and their cronies shall at worst be deposed and left alone with their conscience (and bank accounts?). No matter what wrong they chanced to do, their intentions were noble: possibly wrong but terribly romantic.
All there is to 'the magic' discussed here is possibly a 'machine' milling 1674
fossilized myth(ologie)s, more or less obtuse allegories (such as the journey or arrival, the maltreated yet forgiving savior in agony, the Ulysses shtick etc) and fakelore basking in an ocean of infantile melodrama, whose handle shrewd gamesmen endlessly crank with the help of fitful gasbags preaching impending doom of some sort or another.
As an example, where did Chewbacca possibly come from? We got the imagery of a sort of Sasquatch named after an elusive creature possibly appearing in print only in 1851 in the story mentioned below:
There's a new varmint come around in our county, that's got a mortal likin for the tobaker crap. They looks a good deal like a fox, but are as big as a three year old nigger, and can climb a tree like a squirrel, and they steals a dozen or so 'hands' every night, and next marnin' ef you notice, you'll see all the tops of. the pinoaks around the plantation kivered with them a-dryin", and the infernal Chawbacks-that's what we call 'em-a settin' 'up in a crotch, a chawin' what is cured, and squirtin! ambeer all over the country. Got any on em' up here yet? (Burke 1854:114-115). A search on popular Google and Google Scholar in September 2011 returned zero relevant results for the term “Chawback�: the secret is safe. Chewbacca belongs to the Wookies. It sounds just a little bit like a charming anglicized version of Wocki, a grotesque, gigantic hairy animal character (=just like the Star Wars movie character) of the Swiss-German Basel carnival. It is always possible to go on the internet, however, and find that Chewbacca derives from the Russian word for dog (sobaka), or the filmmaker's own dog. Does Star Wars' artificial moon Death Star resemble Saturn's moon Mimas as some argue, perchance?
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What about the planet Tatooine? Was this term derived from French tatauine (aller
à tatauine=go to hell), or a French colonial prison camp in the Tunisian desert?
What about the character in the last Star Wars movies, Padme (Padmé)? Is that “lotus” in Sanskrit, perchance? The goddess Padma, whose body is the universe2117? Is princess Leila the divine lila (divine play)? Is it really that simple? It is important to emphasize again how the standard moviegoer has no idea whatsoever about what a Chawback or the goddess Padma might be, yet the 'magic' never fails to yield dividends in the same way as the Ulysses shtick never stops ensorcelling people who have no clue what the Odyssey is exactly about.
Does this incoherent jumble of images not resemble a disjointed collection of scraps from a Discovery Channel cutting room session? Does this farrago in turn not look sinisterly like casual observations from a psychoanalytic notebook? Readers shall come to their own conclusions.
What about Robin(s) Hood? Could Robin Hood be some old acquaintance's clone?
By the time they were grown boys, [Romulus and Remus] employed themselves actively on the farm and with the flocks and began to go hunting in the woods; their strength grew with their resolution, until not content only with the chase they took to attacking robbers and sharing their stolen goods with their friends the shepherds. Other 2117
”He himself existed before anything else did, and he holds all things together. ”. ( Colossians 1:17). St. Teresa of Avila thought the same about the Christian god; Muslim mystics thought likewise about Allah. In Christian art, a statue of Mary (Cluny Museum, Paris) from Eastern Prussia (XV century) sees her body as abode of a statue of father god, in turn abode of Jesus crucified. That kind of statue epitomized an entire genre of medieval art called vierges ouvrantes: (statue) of the opening virgin.
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young fellows joined them, and they and the shepherds would fleet the time together, now in serious talk, now in jollity. (Livy 1960:3351, emphasis added). Even earlier Theseus, the swashbuckling founder on a journey, was sung to have delivered Attica from the plight of brigands; earlier still, Hindu god Ganesha was said to have delivered both men and gods from the threat of unsavory, abusive characters such as demon king Ravana. History merges with myth: in 1926-8 Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek mounted the Northern Expedition to unify China defeating a series of local caudillos (warlords).
Later, even Romulus and Remus2118 are subjected to the reversal of fortune and scourging befalling all savior-heroes:
but Remus was caught and handed over to Amulius. The brigands laid a complaint against their prisoner, the main charge being that he and his brother were in the habit of raiding Numitor’s land with an organized gang of ruffians and stealing the cattle. Thereupon Remus was handed over for punishment to Numitor. (Livy 1960:33-51, emphasis added). As readers can easily see here, the Romulus and Remus narrative was compounded later with Celtic reminiscences and tailored to fit English milieus in order to bring forth the medieval brigand Robin Hood, adding – so argue some- the item of mythical highwaymen. It is therefore impossible to suggest that in those cases the entertainer may be nodding at something the public doesn't know; it is 2118
“this myth told of two brothers, *Manu- "Man" (Sanskrit Manu, Avestan *Manus, Germanic Mannus being linguistic correspondences; Old Norse Odinn and Latin Romulus being structurally related) and *Yemo- "Twin" (Sanskrit Yama, Avestan Yima, Old Norse Ymir, and Latin Remus being linguistic matches; Germanic Tuisco being a semantic match; Sanskrit Mandvi and Purusa, Pahlavi Gayomart being structurally related). ” (Lincoln 1976:42). Biblical Cain -just like Romulus- kills a brother before he establishes cities. Hindu elephant-headed god Ganesha is hailed as sarvatman, “whole” or “integral person”.
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possible to suggest that the entertainer is activating those magic spots of the human mind, though.
Myths do tend to coalesce: Jesus Malverde (portrayed as a sort of 1930s gangster) is a sort of folkloric Robin Hood outlaw figure (=arch-trickster breaks taboos in order to bestow boons), and the popular patron of drug traffickers in Sinaloa (Mexico). Different, often conflicting, accounts exist about a real-life figure having been the 'real' Malverde, assertedly murdered in 1909.
Argentina has its Robin Hood figure as well: Gauchito Gil. Giving up battles during the Argentinian civil war, Gil turned (= Jean Valjean, turncoat, good guy<->bad guy shtick) into a Robin Hood outlaw figure. He purportedly promised the policeman who was about to execute him that he would save the policeman's son in critical health condition if the policeman would pray to him. And so it allegedly happened: no mythologist working at his desk could assemble such array of mythemes.
Some have raised objections to this kind of approach (for example criticizing Meheust's theories) alleging that the suggested source(s) are too remote to be the right choice, although such cases as Saint Guinefort's leave no doubt at all. As argued throughout this paper, a large degree of personal choice is involved. It is possible that some may resent casting whatever aspersion upon the received character of anyone/thing involved. Some may brush this aside as mere examples, pattern recognition, selective reading etc. 1678
As some point out Freemasonic imagery present in Jehovah Witnesses' lore (the pyramid, the winged sun, the cross-and-crown, etc), others hasten to add how such symbols aren't exclusive to Freemasonry: people are thus not authorized to 'connect the dots'.
Mormon President H.C. Kimball declared in 1858 about Mormonism â&#x20AC;&#x153;we have the true Masonryâ&#x20AC;? recovered from purported Hebrew sources. While the point seems compelling, a fair dose of luck would be needed by those wishing to propose a party or religion using the Fasci or swastika as symbol alleging that -indeed- they are not exclusive to Fascist regimes ( Fasci are present in the U.S parliament, for example).
According to the paradox of the ravens, however, everything may constitute selective reading and pattern recognition, unless one can satisfactorily prove to have tested all occurrences down to the last one in all possible universes. At least some uncontroversial and compelling evidence exists -such as George Lucas giving publicly credit to Campbell - to substantiate the line followed in this writing. The final verdict rests with the reader, however.
It isn't difficult to identify here what some refer to as 'predictive programming': politicking filmmakers and the entertainment circus spoon-feed the masses what they think is 'the way', 'the right cause', 'where the world is going', how certain attitudes and beliefs are 'bad' and others 'good'.
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Theatrics typically unfolds as proponents of the great cause test waters with (then) counter-cultural proposals, typically retreat or recant a few times until the camel magically is in the tent as the torpid masses gradually get used to what they would at a given moment reject:
Writers, directors, and producers view themselves as â&#x20AC;&#x153;crusaders for social reform in America. They see it as their duty to restructure our culture into their imageâ&#x20AC;Ś.[the entertainment circus] should be a major force for social reform.â&#x20AC;?(Lichter &alii 1983:54-58 ). I think that when the film industry can capture (an idea) and make it glamorous and gorgeous, so that the audience isn't even aware that they're embracing something they never would have embraced before--then, yes, the film as a social motor can inaugurate some kind of change (actor Tom Hanks at a 1991 GLBT fund-raising event2119). I believe the properly manipulated image can provoke an audience to the Burroughsian limit of riot, rampant sex, instantaneous death (director Gus Van Sant2120). If ROMNEY gets elected I don't know if I can breathe same air as Him & his Right Wing Racist Homophobic Women Hating Tea Bagger Masters (performer Cher on the internet in 20122121). Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys, including Quarterback Tony Romo, were names that ACORN [left-wing advocacy group] workers attempted to register to vote during the 2008 presidential election. -...-Gathering signatures was too difficult, said one ACORN worker in Seattle, so he went home and filled out the forms while he "smoked marijuana." (Shawn 2012: no page). Leftist factions compete on who is more multicultural. When ecofanatics at UC-Berkeley illegally saddled themselves in trees on campus and hurled urine and feces to block the construction of a multi-million dollar athletic facility, probably the last thing they 2119 2120 2121
Quoted in Stein 2001: no page. Quoted in Alexis 2010:397. Quoted in Shahid 2012: no page.
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expected was to be called racists. Yet the school’s chancellor, Robert Birgeneau, labeled them just that, saying the environmental radicals were impeding the completion of a new athletic facility designed to attract “minority student athletes.” Puzzled that the chancellor played the race card on them, the tree dwellers argued that “three of the final four” protestors were “Latinos” and the very first hijacker was a “Native American.” One of the Berkeley zealots, who goes by the name “Running Wolf,” said that Mr. Birgenaeau attempted “to pit colored against colored.” ( article over the internet in 2008 2122). If you can write a nation's stories, you needn't worry about who makes its laws. Today, television tells most of the stories to most of the people most of the time (Gerbner 1987: no page2123). “We won the evangelicals, We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.” ( Donald Trump during his presidential campaign as he won the Nevada Republican caucus in February 2016). You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. (M.L. King 1963: no page). Too often we think about leadership simply in terms of persuasion and influence, while in many cases leadership ought to be about mobilizing others to confront difficult problems -...-. To get the people to own the problem, and own the solution (Roberto 2011: The Challenge). This idea became known as the “egg theory.” Sure enough, once Pillsbury left out the dried eggs and required women to add fresh ones, along with milk and oil, to the mix, sales took off. For 2122 2123
PC Campus 2008: no page. Quoted in London 1987: no page.
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housewives in the 1950s, adding eggs and one or two other ingredients was apparently enough to elevate cake mixes from the realm of storebought to servable, even if the dessert was only slightly -...-Sandra Lee of “Semi-Homemade” fame. Lee has literally patented a precise equation delineating the point at which this crossover occurs: the “70/30 Semi-Homemade® Philosophy.” According to Lee, overextended cooks can feel the joy of creation while saving time by using ready-made products for 70 percent of the process (think cake mix, store-bought minced garlic, a jar of marinara sauce) and 30 percent “fresh creative touches” (a bit of honey and vanilla in the cake mix, fresh basil in the marinara sauce). (Ariely 2010:43-44). Your stories must be designed to heighten emotional awareness of the problem your solution is solving.(Lakhani 2005:63).
Nibbling is a tactic in which the negotiator continues to ask for more and more, often implying that you are very close to an agreement and there is just one more thing left to add. In fact, as mentioned in a previous lecture, some refer to this gambit as “yes, but” tactics. (Freeman 2014:108). A controversial book2124 once virulently denounced a supposed radical left-wing conspiracy to take over America through the rogue use of -broadly put'brain-washing' methods (including psychoanalytic methods). A thesis similar to Szasz's, who denounces the commodious and culturally-specific character of a verdict of mental insanity. The Devlin-Hart-Dworkin debate about homosexuality and the “psychiatric admission” of political dissidents in post-Stalinist USSR show it.
Szasz's arguments -although coming from a professor of psychiatry- are taken by many to be controversial; yet they share the same approach that understandably underscored the debate about the criminalization of homosexuality.
The book denounced certain practices -such as electric shocks- that 2124
Strickley 1959.
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uncannily resemble later denunciations of the highly unethical (and State-funded) Mkultra/Cameron2125 experiments that took (at the U.S government's behest) the Victorian fixation with hypnosis and altered states of consciousness to unethical new depths.
Of course, according to some, all that never happened and/or happened in less sensational proportions than let believe. The book also explicitly established a parallel between the 'justified' recourse to 'brain-washing' to re-educate people in defeated enemy countries, and the growing fear such 'scientific methods' may be used as a rogue weapon of mass control in unscrupulous politicians' hands.
The debate still goes on:
A different 2007 study, says the report, found the 5-to-1 margin between liberal versus conservative professors had become 8-to-1. Almost 20 percent of professors in social sciences and 25 percent of sociology professors self-identifies as “Marxist.”-...-. Students are immersed in an education that emphasizes the wrongs done to minorities, women, gays and other groups. Gender, ethnic, religious and sexual orientation grievances are highlighted as representative of an imperial, racist, exploitative capitalist superpower that continues to engage in widespread racism, sexism, homophobia and worldwide domination. (Elder 2012: no page). After having been at work to “make the world safe for democracy” for over 30 years (1914-1945), the 'patriotic' cohort of wartime spin-doctors; social alchemists, whose gums bleed for humankind; 'patriotic' psych-warfare experts; 2125
Patients underwent heavy electrical shocks and unorthodox therapies, and were administered massive doses of psychotropic cocktails in the alleged attempt to 'reprogram' them to bypass neuroses etc. The government was interested in the possibility of creating 'psychobombs', perfect killers on demand for rogue intelligence purposes, as it was rumored the Soviets were very ahead in the field. The program was a complete failure, along with other similar ones devoted to ESP, psychokinesis etc (in perfect Victorian fashion once again).
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politicking minorities; 'militant' filmmakers; jingoist clinicians etc started to appear to some in a new light throughout the 'scares' of the 1950-60s and to our day (= the “cultural Marxism” issue): the adjectives “Communist”, “subversive” and “Jewish” appeared jointly with disturbing frequency. As it's clearly seen, the same emotional arguments and journalistic appeals are evergreen: they can easily be used to broadside a number of different targets at the behest of whoever sees fit to do so.
This situation goes back to ancient Greece, where wealthy citizens were expected to contribute to communal life by either offering war equipment (such as war ships), or by sponsoring theater performances at civic festivals (typically under Dionysus' aegis). Every playwright operated under the tutelage of one such sponsor who -by the very situation- could influence how the playwright slanted his plays, which were a foremost tool in the political arena; at some point, the Athenian State took upon itself to finance these events. Naturally, a feedback-loop situation arose as bankrollers and the State in turn had to factor in the way in which the myth had been slanted, more or less according to their instructions and desired outcome.
The feedback loop, broken record effect involving the fossilized myth(ologie)s, the public, the media and policy making requires that each participant be (at least to a telling degree) shaped by the interplay: policy making determines today's bogeyman and/or fetish; the media slantingly
produce an
emphatic, sensationalized and prettified image thereof that -no matter how preposterous- the public perceives as being reality pure and simple as caught on
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film (the Cottingley fairies are an example).
It is as old as man:
prominent Romans might present a client, especially one with a reputation for literary or historical work, with notes for him to work up into a text that would enhance their joint reputations. Among others, Cicero sent notes on his year as consul to the historian Lucceius, in hopes of seeing them transformed into a history glorifying his deeds of 63 BC (Woodard 2007:246). triggers helped us answer why some products get talked about more. More frequently triggered products got 15 percent more word of mouth. Even mundane products like Ziploc bags and moisturizer received lots of buzz because people were triggered to think about them so frequently. -...-Furthermore, not only did triggered products get more immediate word of mouth, they also got more word of mouth on an ongoing basis. (Berger 2013:44). The public then identifies with both; policy makers shall factor in the public's reaction shaped by the media, and all over again. U.S authorities took a careless approach during the Vietnam war allowing the press to roam free, perhaps as experts naively anticipated only a short and glorious campaign. The negative backlash, and domestic unrest, resulting from 'bad press' taught the U.S government a lesson put to the test in later years through gagging countermeasures, deployment of centralized public relations, stricter surveillance etc.
As mentioned earlier, financing and propelling spin-doctors, 'engaged' filmmakers and other bizarre characters for the purpose of wartime propaganda had the -however foreseeable- effect of having the same propaganda tools turned against the original bankrollers. Many golden names of WWII U.S war propaganda were 1685
back -after short eclipses in the late 1940s and 1950s- milling aggressive social alchemy on screen in the 1960s.
After all, bandwagon appeals counting on human mind's neuralgic points are so flexible: the evil trickster -to name just one- can be just about any party, whether individual or collective. That is not about an analysis of group dynamics as much as it is about quintessential threats, in the same way scares about contamination (food, epidemics or otherwise) are not about epidemiology and lab tests as much as they are about archetypal fears.
The carbon-copied sobriquet of the schizophrenic community spinning improbable yarns about itself as it schemes to achieve (world) domination playing on the simpleton's good will has been pinned to many over the centuries: Rome, Spain, England, USA, USSR, Germany, Japan, China, French-Canadians, Jews, bankers, spammers...
Pathologizing
(=medicalization)
foes
(subalterns,
competitors 2126,
strangers...) knows no bound: Nicolson denounces the pathologization of women under patriarchy.
exaggerating dangers and creating diseases and risks are key marketing tactics used by promoters of propaganda in the helping professions. The term medicalization describes â&#x20AC;&#x153;a process by which non-medical problems become defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of illness and 2126
Press campaigns disguised as 'unbiased' informational reports recurrently berate Chinese restaurants as unsanitary under many aspects; and merchandise from this or that foreign country as third-rate, poor-quality, toxic etc.
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disorders”(Conrad, 2007 , p. 4). The terms “healthy” and “unhealthy” have been applied to an ever wider range of behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. (Gambrill 2012:159). We used to moralize; today we normalize, and performance anxiety is the secular version of our old religious guilt. (Perel 2006:74). As we just saw in the previous section, this playing with the neuralgic spots of the human psyche is not new, but goes back to the very beginning of civilization. To approach the matter from another angle, it is useful to add that pathetic rhetoric and exempla went hand in hand in Roman times as persuasive strategies.
More precisely, Ahl2127 comments “”formidable speaking”, deinotes, is a major style of oratory in antiquity -...- [and] it relies on the listener to supply details omitted altogether by the speaker -...-. The reader or listener must supply some information, do some work himself”. The 'detective angle' ( a sort of suspense device) sits at the heart of Greek tragedy, or the divide between (a version of an) established order (=myth), and challenges to the same (=riddle):
Because riddles appeal to prerequisite group knowledge, riddle performance assists in the definition ofthe knowledge boundaries ofthe riddler's group or subgroup. "Insiders" will be equippedto understand the desired answer, whether or not they are capable of suggesting it. Once revealed, whether by themselves or by the riddler, the answer appears "reasonable" to group members. The "logic"of the answer may not, however, be apparent to "outsiders," who do not possess the knowledge necessary to propose an answer, and who could not understand the basis for determining the "correct" answer without further explanation. (Thatcher 1996:220). 2127
1984:175-6.
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the notion that puzzlement or dissonance [=riddle] inspires writing is found throughout the rhetorical tradition from Cicero through Quintilian to Wilson -...- The fact that riddles are not solved, therefore, does not invalidate the comparison of rhetorical invention with the creating and solving of riddles. The very impossibility of solving some riddles, as we have seen, provides yet another point of comparison between rhetoric and riddles. And the cognitive and epistemic process of merely apprehending and appreciating the riddle answer parallels the experience of the writer, who must pursue discovery and surprise through writing, realize a change in perception and understanding, and attain a more personally satisfying interpretation of the facts of reality.(Jasnowski 1991:7,122) The Zeigarnik Effect is attributed to Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik. The Zeigarnik Effect says that people are more likely to remember things that are left incomplete than those that have been completed. This was first observed with waiters when it was noted that they remembered more of what was required by customers who had not paid their bills than those who had. The Zeigarnik Effect is also often referred to as the basis for the idea of cliffhangers in movies and books. Something is left incomplete, which creates tension that begs for closure, which keeps people watching.-...-By creating a cliffhanger, you leave people wanting to know more.(Lakhani 2008:145, emphasis added). What Otto termed “the numinous experience” (=non-rational realization of the holy, which Robert Thurman equates with Mahayana Buddhist “emptiness” that doesn't manifest) -which Moses might have experienced approaching the bush that was on fire, yet never consumed 2128- has been shifted to apply to serialized folklure, canned newscasts and glib infomercials:”Believe it or not, the attention span of the average person is about 30 seconds! Focusing attention has been compared to controlling a troop of wild monkeys. Attention craves novelty”2129.
People nowadays have 'numinous experiences' with malt liquor or 2128
“There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. ” (Exodus 3:2). 2129 Boothman 2000:11.
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condom brands, including possible conversion scenes when switching loyalty from one brand of espresso coffee to the next. In the infomercial, a character utters some glib, gnostic-sounding slogan perceived as “formidable speech” 2130, and hard-core skeptics are instantly convinced to switch to General Electric, Schlitz, Chevron, General Motors, Colgate, Philco...
Religious conversion is no different. Enlightened layman Vimalakirti stuns all 500 of the Buddha's disciples, plus a variety of celestial beings with his wisdom (Mahayana Vimalakirti Sutra, about 100 CE); compared to Vimalakirti, all these sages and deities are as clueless as infomercial characters before the conversion to the brand being promoted.
Vimalakirti leaves Ananda (the Buddha's closest disciple) speechless thus:
"[Ananda] replied: 'The body of the Lord manifests some indisposition, and he needs some milk. Therefore, I have come to fetch some.' "Vimalakirti then said to me, 'Reverend Ananda, do not say such a thing! Reverend Ananda, the body of the Tathagata is tough as a diamond, having eliminated all the instinctual traces of evil and being endowed with all goodness. How could disease or discomfort affect such a body? "'Reverend Ananda, go in silence, and do not belittle the Lord. Do not say such things to others. It would not be good for the powerful gods or for the bodhisattvas coming from the various buddha-fields to hear such words. -...-There is no injury to the body of a Tathagata, as it is rid of all defilements. The body of a Tathagata is uncompounded and free of all formative activity. Reverend Ananda, to believe there can be 2130
For example, a chocolate cream snack brand contains 30% (20, 50, whatever) less saturated fat than all other comparable snacks. An investment scheme promises 20% returns...”When the patriarch Mahakasyapa had uttered this discourse, thirty-two thousand gods conceived the spirit of unexcelled, perfect enlightenment. ” (Vimalakirti Sutra, Thurman trans.).
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illness in such a body is irrational and unseemly!' "When I had heard these words, I wondered if I had previously misheard and misunderstood the Buddha, and I was very much ashamed. Then I heard a voice from the sky: 'Ananda! The householder speaks to you truly. Nevertheless, since the Buddha has appeared during the time of the five corruptions, he disciplines living beings by acting lowly and humble. Therefore, Ananda, do not be ashamed, and go and get the milk!' (R. Thurman trans.). For a more finicky mind, complex postmodern rituals are offered: bungee-jumping; tattooing; posthumous trials of long-deceased tyrants; kite surfing, and so forth. It turns out the “numinous experience” is based -once again- upon “formidable speech” as explained above:
it is because deinos [=deinotes]is simply the numinous (mostly of course at a lower level, in an arrested form, attenuated by rhetorical or poetic usage). Consequently deinos is the equivalent of dirus and tremendus . It may mean evil or imposing, potent and strange, queer and marvellous, horrifying and fascinating, divine and daemonic, and a source of energy . Sophocles means to awaken the feeling of a numinous awe through the whole gamut of its phases at the contemplation of man, the creature of marvel (Otto 1936:40). The theory behind some anger-management therapies is that anger is like a poison created by your brain. If you express that anger, then you let that poison out. Screaming, letting off steam, venting grievances, and not bottling up anger are all expressions that focus on the concept of catharsis. According to the theory, by engaging in certain actions, it may be possible to reduce or eliminate anger. As compelling as these concepts are, recent evidence suggests that catharsis is a myth. In fact, particularly at certain phases during the process of becoming angry, expressing anger will result in more, not less, overall anger. Consider this research by Brad Bushman and his colleagues. They began their study by recruiting participants and making them angry. -...-Exactly the opposite result was obtained, however. Using the punching bag did not reduce anger; it significantly increased it. (Vishton 2016:132-133).
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Planning to bring about chaste Hippolytus's death because he scorns her, angry Aphrodite announces:”He doesn’t see the gates of Hades gaping wide for him, or realize this daylight is his last.”2131. Medieval collections of Iberian exempla destined to the education of the wealthy and powerful ( miroirs des princes) always require some sort of dialogue or other interaction through which the spirit of the powerful figure to be advised is puzzled, pushed to inquire further in order to possibly jump to conclusions in the end:”And, while parables are sometimes misunderstood due to their lack of overt explanation -...- they are simpler and more accessible than most forms of philosophical discourse and are certainly far more interesting.”2132;”most moralizing tales, [are] understood retrospectively, with its conclusion already established. ”2133.
As an example of moralizing tale(s) understood retrospectively with an already established conclusion, an article by Ann Coulter tries to use the established, moralizing conclusion of a well-known story to foster a political point, whereby:
Gun control laws were originally promulgated by Democrats to keep guns out of the hands of blacks. This allowed the Democratic policy of slavery to proceed with fewer bumps and, after the Civil War, allowed the Democratic Ku Klux Klan to menace and murder black Americans with little resistance. (Contrary to what illiterates believe, the KKK was an outgrowth of the Democratic Party, with overlapping Euripides 2007:126 (Hippolytus 69-71). A very common mytheme. Tasso ( Gerusalemme Liberata, XII:470-475) writes about Tancredi ready to slay Clorinda he hasn't recognized as they fight:” Misero, di che godi? oh quanto mesti fiano i trionfi ed infelice il vanto! Gli occhi tuoi pagheran (se in vita resti)di quel sangue ogni stilla un mar di pianto. ”. 2132 Hunt 2001:38. 2133 Koortbojian 1995:46. 2131
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membership rolls. The Klan was to the Democrats what the American Civil Liberties Union is today: Not every Democrat is an ACLU'er, but every ACLU'er is a Democrat. Same with the Klan.) -...- With logic like that, Republicans eventually had to fight a Civil War to get the Democrats to give up slavery. -...- This will give you an idea of how gun control laws worked. Following the firebombing of his house in 1956, Dr. Martin Luther King, who was, among other things, a Christian minister, applied for a gun permit, but the Alabama authorities found him unsuitable. A decade later, he won a Nobel Peace Prize (2012:no page). In the case here in point the author first establishes common ground, then uses the retrospectively established truth (or the common ground) as an emotional weapon against a political party used to seeing that sort of arguments as its exclusive domain. The author also uses bandwagon appeals to the circular founding myths of the horde in fusion, the evergreen past whose experience in the present is so much sought after, so that an efficient riposte may offer itself up for criticism on that very account.
Exempla are not only 'situations that look alike', but situations linked by an unavoidable inductive logical relationship, whereby more cogent proof may be lacking:
Nel mito si struttura l'organizzazione romana secondo il mos. E nel mos soprattutto non c'è da deliberare, né da giudicare, ma da lodare ο biasimare.” (Roman [argumentation] revolves around mos. And mos requires neither deliberation, nor judgment, but praise or blame) (Zorzetti 1980:51, free translation). but seldom do we find, or even seek after, reliable documentation. The lack of verification in no way diminishes the appeal urban legends have for us. We enjoy them merely as stories, and we tend at least to half-believe them as possibly accurate reports. (Brunvand 1981:11). 1692
Cioè, a mio parere, l'efficacia del modello esemplare descrive un campo categoriale della mentalità, un campo antropologicamente dato, in cui ogni cultura storicamente determinata organizza a suo modo proprie forme di giustificazione dell'induzione. (In my opinion, the strength of the exemplary approach rests within categories of mentality, an anthropological given, whereby each historically given culture organizes in its own way its own strategies to justify induction (Zorzetti 1980-1:147, free translation). Christian preachers used collections of exempla (such as de Vitry's in the XIII century) in their ministry: short stories with an assured ability to trigger a knee-jerk reaction:
CCXIV There is a certain place in Normandy called Walter's Leap, because a foolish man named Walter leaped from the spot to show his mistress that he loved her so much that he would shun no danger for her sake. She likewise promised to follow him wherever he went. When, however, she saw Walter drowned, she was unwilling to follow him, and shortly after took up with another lover (de Vitry 1890). CCXXIII A knight in the diocese of Artois neglected his wife for a mistress. The wife complained of this frequently to the image of the Virgin, who said to her one night in a vision, " I cannot avenge you on that woman, for although she is a sinner she bows before me a hundred times a day, and says, Ave Maria. The wife awoke, and went sadly away. (de Vitry 1890). In other words the familiar framework and format of the fairy tale were used to circumvent distrust and to facilitate identification (Fitzgerald 2006:13). The exemplum is paradoxical in that it refers both to the ordinary— an example of a dog is any instance of a dog, so any old dog will do— and to the extraordinary—historical examples that establish actions to be avoided or imitated stand out from the crowd. An exemplum turns out to be either the most representative or the most singular instance. (Lowrie 2007:104).
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Then, too, the lives of the Saints are often more effective than mere instruction for inspiring us to love heaven as our home. Hearing about their example will generally be helpful in two ways. In the first place, as we compare ourselves with those who have gone before, we are filled with a longing for the future life; secondly, if we have too high an opinion of our own worth,, it makes us humble to find that others have done better. (Saint Gregory 1959:7). L'exemplum médiéval se définit par son efficacité. Serti dans un sermon le plus souvent destiné à des laïcs sans culture théologique, il comporte sept atouts : l'univocité, la brièveté, l'authenticité, le vraisemblable, le plaisir qu'il doit procurer, son caractère métaphorique et sa facilité à être retenu par la mémoire. (Berlioz 1980:113). Whereas figural interpretation is a process of discovering the mysteries of God's creation by revelation [such as the intuitive perception of the real-life meaning of an otherwise garbled oracle], exemplary storytelling is a creative act on the part of humanity. (Hunt 2001:34). El exemplum ofrece a cada hecho y a cada vivencia una norma, por eso esencialmente es educativo porque repite el sentido con que la Edad Media entendía la vida y aceptaba su sentido, por tanto, el ejemplo constituye el instrumento y la representación que tiene la cultura del mundo objetivo y fue la expresión más adecuada de la realidad que podía ofrecer la civilización medieval (Haro Cortes, cit. in Cepedello Moreno 2003-4:207)2134. Mythological figures turn up in these early prose works often because of the importance that the past played for Greeks in debates over contemporary matters. (Woodard 2007:242). That the great moments in the struggle of individuals form a chain, that in them the high points of humanity are linked throughout millennia, that what is highest in such a moment of the distant past be for me still alive , bright and great this is the fundamental thought of the faith in humanity which is expressed in the demand for a monumental history. (Nietzsche 2134
Exemplum offers norms to regulate every fact and experience; it it educative in the sense it conveys the meaning by which the Middle Ages understood and accepted life. The exemplum constitutes thus the vehicle and the representation of the objective world that culture endorsed; it was the most adequate expression of reality medieval civilization could offer.
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1874:15). And I wish that you would, if possible, show me a little more clearly that virtue can be taught. Will you be so good? That I will, Socrates, and gladly. But what would you like? Shall I, as an elder, speak to you as younger men in an apologue or myth, or shall I argue out the question? To this several of the company answered that he should choose for himself. Well, then, he said, I think that the myth will be more interesting. (Plato, Protagoras:252). The main actors in these stories are equally fossilized figures invariably associated with 'image' or 'expectation' banks that the human psyche (soul in Greek, opposed to phrenos2135 ) loves so much. In Wells' Time Machine a few mysterious, truly iconic characters take part in the meetings: the Psychologist, the Provincial
Mayor, the Medical Man, the Editor of a well-known daily paper , down to simply a Very Young Man, and the Silent Man, and so forth. Why are these iconic characters referred to in uppercase fonts, as if they were real names, much like Napoléon Bonaparte or Flash Gordon? Why this sort of living synecdoche2136 or metaphor?
Fossilized characters are ubiquitous. The evil witch godmother who casts a spell upon this or that princess' birth or wedding because she hadn't been invited (accidentally or maliciously) to the party goes back to the primordial myth of Peleos and Thetis' wedding2137. Nobody would want evil to rain down on one's birth; yet Phrenology was the first name associated with the procedures later taken over and updated by contemporary psychology. The “rational account” ( logos) of phrenos (mind) was replaced by the “rational account” of psyche (soul). As it appears, when soul (psyche) replaces mind (phrenos), the verdict (psychoanalysis) is predetermined to be eminently theological in nature, notwithstanding all protestations to the contrary: a disturbance of the soul runs much deeper than a disturbance of the mind in symbolic terms. The jargon of psychoanalysis could -and in fact was and is- be easily (ab)used to curse the analyst's political or personal foes, whether individually or collectively. The first one to use the term psychology was apparently German philosopher Goclenius in 1590. 2136 Where a part ( for example one Medical Man ) is used to signify the whole (= the attitude of the members of the medical profession ). 2137 Thetis, a primordial deity often typecast as a nymph but elsewhere said to be so powerful to shift the balance in 2135
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evil (strife or any other term) is part and parcel of the human experience: one ought to better be prepared to face it.
The goddesss Eris (discord or strife) resented not having been invited and put in motion the whole “apple of discord” episode, in turn the main cause of the Trojan War. Sati (Shiva's first wife) attends her father Daksha's fire ceremony uninvited. After she commits suicide, Shiva cuts off Daksha's head. Empedocles (Greek philosopher, V century BCE) also posited love and strife (as in the primordial myth of Peleos and Thetis' wedding: the doppelgaenger motif again) as principles presiding over the universe's elemental dynamics.
Alternatively, Daksha (son of Brahma, Rig Veda, XV century BCE or older) did not invite son-in-law Shiva to a great ceremony, and insulted him, which caused his daughter Sati to commit suicide out of shame; this in turn invited Shiva's anger that caused the annihilation of those who attended the ceremony. So many cases of small mistakes trigger disastrous consequences of tidal proportions: if only mortals had known.
How many movies (books, stories...) are there - from Terminator (1984) to Sliding Doors (1998) etc – beating the concept of alternative time-lines to death? “We may consider the concept of time as critical juncture in gnostic movies. Gnosticism considers time a prison, a source of mystification and illusion” 2138. Zeus' favor in the struggle for supremacy among the gods, had shape-shifting abilities and had to be conquered by her future mortal husband Peleos: the item hasn't stopped selling ever since, and shape-shifting creatures (often fairy brides) crowd folklore the world over. 2138 “podemos considerar o conceito de tempo como o ponto crítico nos filmes gnósticos. O gnosticismo encara o
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Boothman2139 explains how his boss of yore, F.X. Muldoon, convinced an important client to advertise with Muldoon's magazine Woman in the 1960s. Muldoon instructed Boothman to prepare a huge bag full of ready-made envelopes complete with stamps, which he instructed Boothman to empty on the client's office floor: advertising with Muldoon would bring them so many prospective buyers, really.
Although no trace of F.X. Muldoon can be found online beside Boothman's recollection from the 1960s, the 'great man' Steve Jobs -in the 1960s just a kid- is also future-pacing, messing with time-lines:
Jobs did not say it quite that way. He simply said, “iPod. One thousand songs in your pocket.” No one could describe it better in more concise language. One thousand songs that could fit in your pocket. What else is there to say? One sentence tells the story and also answers the question, Why should I care? (Gallo 2010:43). The prospect is offered of the momentous impact seemingly trivial events/oversights may exert on the greater scheme of things of either world history or individual life. Due to a series of mishaps, Patachara of Buddhist lore loses her status, her husband, her two small sons, her family: naked in shameful frenzy (just like Adam of Hebrew lore who hides naked after transgression), she regains composure in a Buddha's presence to later become a saintly nun2140. tempo como uma prisão, fonte de mistificação, ilusão e engano.” (Vieira Ferreira 2009:56). 2004. 2140 Just like Adam, Patachara in her fit of grieving madness ignored to be naked until she was summoned to the Buddha's presence. “Once they chose to be other than what they were, they became naked and ashamed. Nakedness symbolized their true and authentic selves. They were who they were and they were okay with it. There was nothing to hide. They could be perfectly and rigorously honest. This symbolic and metaphorical description of Adam and Eve is a description of the human condition. ” (Bradshaw 1988:viii). 2139
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Here is the butterfly effect, whereby -according to chaos theory- a butterfly flapping its wings may bring about a hurricane on the other side of the world2141:
An effect of immense happiness may arise from a small virtuous act, and small non-virtuous act can bring immense suffering. Hence, karmic causation seems to involve a magnification which is not found in ordinary external causation (Terentyev no date ME6217:unit 3:4). The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble (Blaise Pascal, 1670). Is it really different from the ritual oversights that ultimately resulted in the death of (semi)divine characters of lore such as Achilles, Siegfried and Balder? What about incidents that see gods (spirits, witches...) not being (accidentally, maliciously or on purpose such as the goddess of discord Eris at Peleos and Thetis' wedding) invited to a seemingly auspicious event (wedding, birth etc), which puts the chain of misfortune in motion, such as in the Sleeping Beauty folk tale?
An optional possibility is that to recast the past in order to alter the future -for example in Terminator, The Kid (2000), Back To The Future (1985ss),The Man With Rain In His Shoes (1998)-: Hercules never leaves the crossroad.
Although improbable at first glance, Back To The Future (1985ss) recasts 2141
Ven. Wuling (Buddhist monastic of the Pure Land tradition and right-hand person to noted great master Chin Kung) followed the same line of thought describing Buddhist karma, or the endless chain of action and reaction that lead the rebirth cycle: the greatest consequences mature from seemingly trivial beginnings. It is human mind's old obsession with choices and consequences that myths belabor to death.
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the oedipal dilemma (is fate cast in stone? Can we overturn fate's decrees? Are we victims of our environment, or can we shape it through our actions?) in a sci-fi extravaganza engineered to chime with Reaganite policies extolling the American dream: self-made men eventually triumph over adversities of all kinds (=the usual hero shtick).
Myths can coalesce: in The Kid, a frustrated middle-age yuppie meets his 8-year old self, thus bringing back suppressed childhood memories. He was once bullied as a child, which had shaped his future life. He and his child self thus take remedial actions, then go back in time to engineer an alternative outcome for the bullying episode (much as it happens in Back To The Future). The climax consists in the 8-year old self overcoming the bully, whom he obliges to apologize: a scene identical to the climax scene in Bloodsport.
Hard as it might be to believe it, Dues 2142 tells the same story as what really happened to him when he was 6 or 7yo (time travel and paranormal encounters excepted, of course). The meeting of people from one's forlorn past happens within the frame of a comedy (The Kid), or as a paranormal drama (Flatliners).
Achilles, Balder, Siegfried and other heroes perish because of some seemingly trivial oversight during the rite that granted them invincibility. Krishna perishes as a hunter accidentally shoots him in the foot (=Achilles' heel). Gautama 2142
2010:Teaching Our Children About Conflict.
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Buddha asks his head disciple Ananda three times (=the importance of sacred numbers) whether he should live an entire eon: Ananda2143 forgets three times to say that Buddha ought to live an eon indeed. After great struggle, Gilgamesh recovers the plant that could grant him a second youth: a snake eats it 2144 as he bathes. Gautama Buddha leaves the community of the faithful free to abolish the lesser precepts if they see fit: Ananda forgets to ask which were the lesser precepts, exactly.
That's why -right here and now- that 'special law' has to be passed; that new social alchemy scheme or charity has to be funded; this party has to be either voted or banned; that foreign land has to be carpet-bombed or invaded...if we leave stones unturned, doom may await us in the future.
Schroedinger's cat that embarrassed quantum physicists is dead or alive (or both) depending on our observation of what goes on inside the cat's box, where an atomically random event determines either his death or his survival. Didn't this or that folkloric precious savior-hero already warn us about our state as â&#x20AC;&#x153;potential sinnersâ&#x20AC;?? In some alternative time-line (universe...) or another, we have stolen that apple, killed that opponent, robbed that bank: reverse paranoia. 2143
There are parallel motifs, however imperfect, that recur in the figures of both Buddhist Ananda and Christian St. Peter. As the great man's closest disciples, Peter and Ananda would have been expected to excel in both practice, wisdom and doctrine: this was clearly not the case. In Buddhist lore, before the I council Ananda was not yet an arahant but a sekha (=one in the course of perfection); Peter wasn't much skilled, either. Peter denied Jesus three times; Ananda (the Buddha's cousin) refused to give water to the dying Buddha (because a neighboring stream had been muddled as a caravan passed by), and so forth. Other imperfect analogies between Buddhism and Christianity are the presumed rivalries between Jesus' real followers and St. Paul, and between Ananda and Mahakassapa. 2144 In Hindu Rig Veda, cosmic snakes may steal the light of the divine creation (Yatsenko, MAISI018 no date: 3.1).
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In a state of paranoia, everything represents a likely threat. In a state of reversed paranoia, everything represents a likely boon or opportunity. Mind magic devotees thus roam an interesting universe ready to gratify them with winning lottery tickets, service-minded people, thrilling and easy sexual encounters, nice weather, and plenty of free parking spaces right where they are most needed:
Even God plays only a supporting role, and by no means an indispensable one, in the Osteens’ [=evangelists] universe. Gone is the mystery and awe; he has been reduced to a kind of majordomo or personal assistant. He fixeth my speeding tickets, he secureth me a good table in the restaurant, he leadeth me to book contracts. Even in these minor tasks, the invocation of God seems more of courtesy than a necessity. Once you have accepted the law of attraction—that the mind acts as a magnet attracting whatever it visualizes— you have granted humans omnipotence (Ehrenreich 2009:363). Joel Osteen is the pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, the largest church in the United States, so big it now holds its services in a renovated sports arena. Lakewood is clearly giving the people what they want. “God didn’t create you to be average,” (Twenge&Campbell 2009:152). Joel Osteen is an evangelical Christian in both piety and theology, though neither is dominant in Your Best Life Now. His evangelicalism is almost vestigial, taken as read, as he conveys his central message of mind power and positive affirmations. -...-But now a generation has arisen that does not know Peale or Schuller, and Joel Osteen is their oracle of New Thought. -...-New Thought is always delicately poised on the edge of superstition anyway, threatening to lend to its practitioners a sense of delusional grandeur. Osteen, far from avoiding the danger, only heightens it. -...-I think New Thought optimism is well founded simply as a matter of psychology. The focus of attention enables one to see opportunities otherwise missed, and so on. -...-We should have learned that in any given case, God may want to bless us or try us. Either seems equally likely. We have no business expecting either one in any given case. How can that realization not undermine his policy of optimism? But instead, he goes right back to the straight 1701
New Thought ticket. -...-That fits quite well with Osteen’s general reliance upon anecdotal evidence. Your Best Life Now is filled from front to back with stories about his own and others’ successes when they have dared to believe in God for good outcomes, personal advancement, and so on.(Price 2008:125-30,134). Advertisement and NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) specialist Boothman quips:”I've talked my way out of dozens of automobile-related tickets -...and not just for parking infractions.”2145. Boothman, just as any other self-help guru, tantalizes people with the possibility of becoming as irresistible as those hyperreal cardboard cut-out characters from that fifty second Irish malt liquor or aftershave ad.
The advice Boothman -and his ilk- impart to the hopeful projects oneliners and situations that seem lifted from posh sit-coms and blockbusters. Even the most despicable nobody can become an “irresistible” Charlton Heston or Eddie Murphy character practicing one-liners and postures the master explains.
This idea of multiple futures at one's fingertip expanded beyond beliefs through the internet. Only a few mouse-clicks away lie one's ideal sex partner, fast and easy princely income, dream job, cheap DVD player or airfare... But after all, isn't the maze of possible futures just the equivalent of no future, “no fate” as Sarah Connor scribbles in Terminator 2 (1991)? “ Paradoxical previsions and prophecies with no fate”2146..
2145 2146
2000:39. Vieira Ferreira 2009:76.
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Quantum mysticism and positive psychology couldn't be far apart in endorsing gnostic quandaries:
In any case, I think the particular sense in which I suggest interpreting the neurosis as a failure of personal growth must be clear by now. It is a Falling short of what one could have been, and even, one could say, of what one should have been, biologically speaking, that is, if one had grown and developed in an unimpeded way . Human and personal possibilities have been lost . The world has been narrowed, and so has consciousness. Capacities have been inhibited. (Maslow 1993:32). But if we think down to the basic building blocks of say protons and neutrons, or even quarks, those are in each of my cells. They are also in the air around me, they are in the window I look through, in the trees beyond the window, in the clouds, and even in the stars that I know are there even if I cannot see them during the day. -...-So there really is no separation. What comprises me, comprises everything in the universe. (Wuling, January 13,2009). If you studied genetics, then you ought to understand Gedatsu-kai (mister Negishi, practitioner of Japanese “new religion” Gedatsukai2147, founded in 1929). Although the human mind loves to dress its speculations in rational garb as religion or science (quantum physics behind Schroedinger's problem; positive psychology; divine providence behind original sin and savior-heroes bound to save us from it), it all is probably as worth as the screenplay of another awful cable TV sci-fi movie.
2147
A U.S branch of the Church gives the following description:”Gedatsu is a religious study whose ultimate objective is to render the state of supreme spiritual awakening or enlightenment to all who sincerely practice its teaching. Literally meaning "to undo", Gedatsu is the means by which we can be freed from the bonds of negative human karma and attain true peace of mind. The centric sacred object of worship of the Gedatsu Church is the source of the Universal Life Force. All things derive their life from this one creative principle. Followers of the Gedatsu teaching strive to cultivate spiritual awareness of this divine source of life by worshipping God, thus strengthening our spiritual character and understanding of the commonality of all creation. ”.
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Of course, the contemporary reader may not be interested in hearing about Hercules, but may be interested in the Hercules myth re-branded to suit contemporary concerns as Joe Magarac (=Joe Jackass), the 'myth become fact' of the steel industry, whom steel workers rarely knew about, yet who was such a literary success2148.
The contemporary reader couldn't care less about whether Emperor Redbeard is still alive, but perhaps Elvis Presley or doctor Mengele might be, much as Nero -whose corpse had never been identified- in his own time had been rumored to have escaped death, and to be hiding somewhere ready to seize power again, perhaps at the head of a Persian army.
Today's people won't weep because Theseus abandoned she who had made his glory possible, or because Apollo and Artemis killed Niobe's sons, but may weep hearing about boat-people, or about the victims of terrorism. People today aren't concerned with Oedipus -or whichever other Greek tragedy hero- suddenly realizing (anagnorisis=recognition) his condition of arch-violator of taboos, and wishing he had gotten the clue earlier. They, however, 'dig' scoops on this or that third world dictator.
Only short earlier, he was brought on tour as kind investor-savior of decrepit western economies: the wealthy and powerful bowed in abject gratitude. The 'savior' suddenly became a genocidal 'freak' placed on international black lists: 2148
Fishwick 1959.
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Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi's fall from grace resonated in the European Union corridors of power on Thursday, as a picture of him in the company of one the bloc's former top officials was removed on Thursday. (Deutsche Presse Agentur 24 February 2011). A British academic with close links to Muammar Gaddafi's son Saif alIslam has left the London School of Economics before a report on the university's relationship with Libya is published. David Held was an academic adviser to the toppled dictator's son when he studied at the LSE and was director of the research programme funded by his charity. Held, who is currently Graham Wallas professor of political science at the LSE, has announced that he is leaving in January to take up a post at Durham University. The LSE is expected to face sharp criticism over the academic independence of the North Africa Research Programme, which was funded with a ÂŁ1.5m donation from the Gaddafi charitable foundation, and Held's departure is regarded internally as the latest aftershock from the donation. The LSE's links with Libya have already triggered the resignation of its director, Howard Davies. Held has extensive ties to Saif al-Islam, now on the run after the violent collapse of his father's dictatorship. Held was on the board of the Gaddafi foundation, the charity run by Saif al-Islam. (Vasagar 2011:no page). The same scene of the now horrified retinue of prigs and dolts who couldn't possibly have known, and now hasten to come clean for their good name's sake in deference to superseding values, continues to apply in all circumstances if political preconditions are in place:
Most of us would be devastated and humiliated by public exposure as a liar and a cheat, but not the psychopath. He or she can still look the community straight in the eye and give impassioned assurances, on their "word of honor." (Hare 1993:112). Doping in professional sports? If only people had possibly known...:
Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, has voted to rescind the honorary degree it conferred on embattled bicyclist Lance Armstrong, a university spokesman confirms. -...- Armstrong was 1705
recently stripped of his seven Tour de France titles after refusing to continue to cooperate with the investigation into allegations of doping. -...-“Lance Armstrong brings a powerful message to our graduates and commencement guests: Never give up," then Tufts president Larry Bacow said when Armstrong was announced as an honorary degree recipient in 2006. "His perseverance on the bike and in life sets an extraordinary example for all who seek to overcome obstacles and achieve their highest goals. We are honored to host him at Tufts.” That statement, too, no longer seems to have stood the test of time. (Halper 2012: no page). In 2003, Lance Armstrong was a hot commodity. As his sponsor at Nike, MacEachern was trying to figure out the best way to harness all the attention Lance was getting. Lance had a powerful story. Diagnosed with life-threatening testicular cancer seven years earlier, Lance had been given only a 40 percent chance of survival. But he surprised everyone not only by returning to cycling, but by coming back stronger than ever. Since his return, he had won the Tour de France an astounding five times in a row and inspired millions of people along the way. From fifteen year- olds dealing with cancer to college students trying to stay in shape, Lance helped people to believe. If he could come back from cancer, they could overcome the challenges in their own lives (Berger 2013:77, emphasis added). All bullies are narcissists, with an inflated sense of self-importance and a marked lack of empathy for their victims’ suffering, while many narcissists turn out to be powerful bullies. In defending his winner-status against detractors, for example, Lance Armstrong made extensive use of the legal system and his access to media in order to bully and intimate anyone who challenged him. -...-Lance Armstrong was abandoned by his biological father and regularly “paddled” as punishment by his stepfather. Bullies, like narcissists, don’t emerge from happy childhoods, secure in their parents’ love and imbued with a sense of their own worth. As they grow, they find ways to compensate: they shed fear, shame, and self-doubts, forcing them onto the losers they persecute. (Burgo 2013:no page). All people are liable to the same treatment, big and not-so-big names alike. Is it time to “erase and forget the concept as such”, or to grant exceptional status under extenuating circumstances that cripple the principle of coherence? Is it
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time for the press to gentlemanly ignore crank calls, damning evidence and tip-offs in the name of privacy and fair play, or to let the public know over and over in the name of freedom of information and nagging suspicions?
Which show goes on, exactly? It depends on whether or not the transgressor's armband, personality or actions -whatever those might be- happen to square with “popular morality”, “free-floating folk beliefs”, “explanations or interpretations usually put forth”, “prevailing cultural trends”, “only an old Phoenician tale of what has often occurred before now in other places”, “the audience’s pre-established set of convictions”.
Rather than the political gem of the check and balance system right out of the breast of goddess Reason 2149, this interplay reads like the unwritten chapter of some Godfather mafia novel. On July 2, 2013, Associated Press informs that:
The Big Ten female athlete of the year award no longer is named for the Olympic track star from Wisconsin who later acknowledged working as a prostitute. -....- Favor competed in the Olympics in 1992, 1996 and 2000. The Smoking Gun website in December first reported that Favor Hamilton had worked as an escort in Las Vegas. She has described it as a "coping mechanism" tied to depression and other personal issues. (Athlete Who...2013: no page). The public may attain 'purgation' (catharsis 2150) in this modern tragedy claiming with the policy makers it knew nothing of the unspeakable deeds now on 2149
Atheist factions during the French Revolution in 1793-4 tried to supplant Christianity with civic rituals heralding republican and enlightenment values axed around the goddess Reason first, followed by the Supreme Being. 2150 According to Meineck (2005-2:The Origins Of Greek Drama), catharsis represents “to step beyond entrenched social position[s], -...- to cross a boundary and in crossing that boundary to reach a truth” (discussing the Odyssey ).
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all newspapers: truth and plausibility are in no way necessary ingredients in a good tragedy.
The process of 'discovery', the busybody peeping aghast as s-he 'realizes' that things are/were not as s-he was told (had believed, read...), and desperately wants to make amends, is a universal fig leaf for societal dynamics. Logrolling groups compete for supremacy in order to invest private concerns with protection reserved to taboos. Vicarious trauma (= second person drama= hearing the accounts of trauma) is an ongoing show on today's media.
An example might be the debate -in Italy in the XIX century- about whether railroads should charge merchandise by weight (favoring agriculture), or by volume (favoring industry). Which productive activity, agriculture or industry, would usher 'the great nation' into the brilliant future that is its?
Alternatively, the same method can be employed to create new crimes and to reshape public sensibility sweeping formerly mainstream doctrines and attitudes under the rug of insensitivity, mental illness and abuse:
Despite documentary evidence of child beating throughout the ages, the "discovery" of child abuse as deviance and its subsequent criminalization are recent phenomena. In a four- year period beginning in 1962, the legislatures of all fifty states passed statutes against the caretaker's abuse of children. This paper is a study of the organization of social forces which gave rise to the deviant labeling of child beating and which promoted speedy and universal enactment of criminal legislation. It is an examination of certain organized medical interests, whose concern in the discovery of the "battered child syndrome" manifestly contributed to the advance of humanitarian 1708
pursuits while covertly rewarding the groups themselves. -...- But prior to the 1960's socio- legal reactions were sporadic, and atypical of sustained reactions against firmly labeled deviance. -...- In each case the primary objective was not to save children from cruel or abusive parents, but to save society from future delinquents. -...- Thus, it was children, not their abusive guardians, who felt the weight of the moral crusade. They, not their parents, were institutionalized. -...- Both in scholarly research -...- and journalistic outcry -...-the last years of the fifties showed dramatically increased concern for the beaten child. -...The opportunity of generating a medical, rather than socio-legal label for abuse provided the radiologists and their allies with a situation in which they could both reap the rewards associated with the diagnosis and avoid the infringement of extra-medical controls. What was discovered was no ordinary behavior form but a "syndrome." Instead of departing from the tradition of organized medicine, they were able to idealize its most profound mission. -...- the discovery of abuse as a new "illness" reduced drastically the intra-organizational constraints on doctors' "seeing" abuse. A diagnostic category had been invented and publicized. -...- The proliferation of the idea of abuse by the media cannot be underestimated. Though its stories were sensational, its credibility went unchallenged. What was publicized was not some amorphous set of muggings but a "syndrome." -...- The problem had become "real" in the imaginations of professionals and laymen alike. It was rediscovered visually by -...- several other television scripts and documentaries (Pfohl 1977:310-11,315, 318-20). It helps to ponder that the “discovery of child abuse” coincided with a campaign to turn children -once subjected to stern parental authority in the form of spanking and injunctions to “eat all veggies”- into one major driving force behind purchase-power, especially in the grocery store. The maximization of the group's economic potential could -as Herbert Spencer had argued eons earlier- be fully tapped into only following a sort of emancipation, like the case of women, people of color and other presumed pariah groups showed: quantum entanglement, indeed.
In recent decades, pets -or animals in general- have plotted the same trajectory children, women, people of color, homosexuals etc have plotted. Beautiful 1709
souls legislate against the horrors the frail, diminutive little creatures suffer(ed). Perpetrators may now go in the dock over what once constituted common practice as comstockers pen new impiety laws.
Prigs and dolts melt in conniptions of oneness.
“ Advertisers have tried to do exactly what this study is talking about — to brand younger and younger children, to instill in them an almost obsessional desire for a particular brand – name product, ” said Dr. Victor Strasburger of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Tom Robinson, the study ’ s author, said the kids ’ taste perception was “ physically altered by the branding. ” (Lakhani 2008:92). Consumerism hastens to seize the moment with an impressive subculture dedicated to pets and animals: dog hotels; dog sitters; dog food; dog grooming; dog toys; dog apparel; dog medicine...as many niches exist in the dog industry that exist in the province of childcare and related consumerism.
Like in the case of a bad soap opera, or the case of professional wrestling, everybody knew what to expect when Hulk Hogan, only seconds earlier having seizures in pain on the canvas, stood up and started hyperventilating; or when Ken Patera outstretched his arms moving his fingers: the 'father (full) nelson' 2151 was coming, and the opponent's defeat was near. That's why movie-makers on a string budget cast lookalikes or copy plot devices: it works nearly as well as 'the real thing' at a fraction of the cost.
2151
A wrestling move.
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Peddling images of dying infants of color, Italian showman Costa could pocket the lion's share2152 of the donations that the meek public in tears would contribute to fight starvation; Italian newspaper Il Giorno (3 December 2011) details how five investment advisers have been detained because they are accused of embezzling euro nine million of charitable funds destined to relieve the situation in Haiti.
Religious or secular charities regularly surface in scandals involving money laundering, tax evasion, and elaborate financial schemes to supply politicians, mafiosi, millionaires and their minions with fresh money. They pay lip service to lemonade oceans, solidarity/charity and other utopian flumadiddle with the alleged purpose of relieving an endless stream of ills typical of societies in decomposition: (illegal) immigration; waste management; public works; foster care for the youth; remedial interventions too numerous to count...
A crowdfunding page for a woman identified only as “Ms. Augusta” raised $1,800 to help the woman in the wake of her eviction from her Bed-Stuy home. But an extensive search of public records and a canvass of the neighborhood did not turn up any eviction that matched the details or any neighbor who knew “Ms. Augusta.” -...[the fundraising pages were created by]Sansosa [who] has a recent history of fraud, according to prosecutors. In March, she pleaded guilty to petit larceny after initially being charged with grand larceny for stealing credit cards from a Manhattan gym locker and using them to make purchases at a store on Park Avenue, court documents show. A judge issued a bench warrant for her arrest on Aug. 11 after she skipped a sentencing hearing, prosecutors said. (DNA INFO New York, August 27, 2017). 2152
The criminal investigation is ongoing. Different sources quote different percentages of the fund that the showman might have embezzled: 70,80, 90%.
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Centro Cooperazione Sviluppo charity at Genova (Italy) registered to help children in Mozambique, Nepal and elsewhere which famous testimonials heavily supported, was revealed in 2006 to be â&#x20AC;&#x153;a black holeâ&#x20AC;? ( un buco nero) in which donations (euro 3,754 million received in 2005) disappeared 2153; three people are sentenced in 2012 to about 1 year prison term with suspended sentence, awaiting further developments. In 2017, Centro Cooperazione Sviluppo is still active asking for donations to bring a smile on children of color's dear little faces.
What about the testimonials' reputation guaranteeing the operation's transparency? They couldn't possibly have known, of course. The real shame rests in the end with the gullible subscribers who possibly believed the charming entertainer as he smiled for the camera with swollen eyes in order to propel the noble charity he had no clue about anyways.
Colossal Operazione Arcobaleno, an Italian
humanitarian and relief
effort for Kosovo orchestrated under a then left-wing government axed around the former Communist Party, is the object of several criminal investigations for all sorts of wrongdoings; press agency ADNKRONOS (on November 8, 2001) writes about goods collected for humanitarian purposes being sold by third parties instead. At Ponzano Veneto2154 (Italy), a charity in charge of collecting foodstuff people donate to fight poverty diverts such groceries to paying parties: directors share benefits.
As this writing suggest, the press can either skewer possible culprits in 2153 2154
Pistacchi 2006: no page. La Tribuna Di Treviso, January 24, 2015.
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their full glory with all details, or take a more reserved approach to honor the presumption of innocence: euro 800.000 directed to an old, unnamed charity in Milan in order to allegedly support youth in difficult situations are fraudulently diverted by an equally unnamed president into the purchase of real estate he would personally own.
ANSA reports2155 how police cleared a travellers' camp at Rome. Foreigners living there -some of whom with criminal records- lived on welfare, yet the police uncovered they had â&#x20AC;&#x153;Centinaia di migliaia di euro in banca â&#x20AC;? (hundreds of thousands euro in the bank).
Such spurious charities are all over the place. The loot is worth it. In the U.S alone, charitable giving totals about 2% of GDP, or over 300 billion US$ in 2012; other estimates see the UK second to the U.S with about 0,9% GDP, and Canada close third. As it happens during electoral campaigns, decoys are set up to 'jam' all segments of the social spectrum. Lieberman 2156 clinches that giving money (to charity, for example) triggers more reward activation in the brain than receiving money.
In July 2013, animal welfare association GAS -which the city hall of Ferrara (Italy) had contracted to run a stray cat shelter- is under investigation: appropriations (euro 60.000 and 40.000 respectively) were mostly devoted to fund the personal and frivolous expenses of the association's leaders rather than to animal 2155 2156
April 15, 2015. 2011.
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welfare.
In 2015, Thom Feeney, an English shoe seller from York, started online a crowdfunding operation to “save Greece” from the ongoing financial scourging by hoping to collect euro 1,6 billion (yes, billion) from website INDIEGOGO:”excite people or inspire them by showing them how they can make a difference”.
No practical details are offered about how the money raised might be concretely put to use, and everything hides behind smokescreens about “making a difference” etc. The website promises Greek culinary delicacies, and even an entire Greek island, as token for benefactors. How that might happen is again a matter of conjecture. Euro 1,93 million have so far been collected (July 6, 2015). Several worried posters already comment on the fund-raising page how the campaign has obviously failed, but no refund has so far been granted.
Mr. Thom Feeney claims to have refunded everybody, and starts anew to raise funds for undisclosed Greek relief operations. While it's possible to argue Feeney might have “made a difference” for himself rather than for Greece as he possibly converted to a “professional crowd-funder”, “ultimate goodness” must be inferred to explain the peculiar obsession of an English shoe clerk and his innumerable imitators.
Of course, the international press is equally involved as it publicizes and lionizes such campaigns to attract yet more hopefuls ready to fan their wallet
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around noble causes.
The mass media, as we have seen, are not unconducive to the survival of urban legends. On the contrary, print or broadcast references to current legends–whether seeking to validate or debunk them—almost always serve to spread the stories farther. Often the media stories supply new details and add to the confusion. (Brunvand 1981:87). People rush to merge like dewdrops into the ocean of well-wishers pledging their money to “make a difference” in order to “save” anything ranging from infants of color, Greece, elusive online romantic interests to improbable personal ventures. Behavioral economy notable Ariely has no doubts:”and what are a few dollars compared to a good story?”2157.
Erik Chevalier, a U.S citizens, collected US$ 122.000 to start a board game enterprise. The endeavor got canceled, and Chevalier declared to be penniless: where did the money go? U.S FTC investigates the matter. In 2015:
FTC lawyers claim that in reality, Chevalier never hired artists and "instead used the consumers’ funds for miscellaneous personal equipment, rent for a personal residence, and licenses for a separate project. The settlement order imposes a $111,793.71 judgment, but it's suspended due to Chevalier's inability to pay. ( Ars Tecnica, June 11, 2015). UK Mirror2158 relays how Maurice Asola Fadola from Ghana swindled a series of lonely British ladies into surrendering their money to him in a romance scam worth UK£ 800.000 as he posed online as a romantic U.S military officer
2157 2158
2015:29. November 1, 2014.
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willing to send them “bars of gold” in exchange for cash advances on shipping fees2159. Seven months into his 5-year hard labour sentence, Fadola simply “disappears” from prison2160.
Elizabeth (Elle) Edmunds, an Australian and mother to six sweet children, made hearts melt as fund-raising started online to help her fight ovarian cancer. It appeared later tattoo-covered Elle never had cancer, and now claims to be mentally ill. Alternatively, Edmunds claims her tattoo-covered partner forced her to stage the scam under threat of violence. Media also suggest the cancer hoax might have been a tentative to elude charges for the possession of unlicensed firearms 2161. Fundraisers pledge to donate to unnamed cancer societies: where will the money finally end?
Such cases are everywhere. August 12, 2015, Associated Press announces that:”A Pennsylvania beauty queen has been jailed on charges she faked having leukemia to benefit from fundraisers, and will be stripped of her title”. 27 yo Jamie Lynn Toler of Phoenix (USA) lied about having cancer to afford breast implants thanks to donations (= about 8.000US$). 19yo Angie Gomez started a fraudulent charity, and collected US$ 17.000 from well-wishers in order to pay for treatment for cancer she didn't have. 25 yo Jessica Vega from New York faked cancer in order
2159
As Biblical lore tells, there is some distraught Esau who is ready and willing to sell his priceless birthright for a pittance: impending synchronicity frazzles the hopeful. In this case, Fadola pledged to deliver bars of gold in exchange for mere shipping fees. In the end, the hopeful is swindled, boons turn out to be fool's gold, and synchronicity peters out. 2160 Ghanian news site Joy Online,September 17, 2015. 2161 Mailonline, February 9, 2015.
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to afford a dream wedding and honeymoon. A flash in the pan? 42 yo Sonja Luker kept up the pretense of having cancer from 2004 to 2010. Thanks to donations (US$ 19.000) she was able to avoid foreclosure of her home, and to buy her husband a motorcycle2162.
Kaltenbach2163 has examined the situation in France drawing a similar portrait. All causes may be (ab)used:
Imagine having your own personal piggy bank filled with funds with which you could do whatever you wanted. Pay off your mortgage or car loans, remodel a home, and even take a trip to Atlantic City. A dream come true; livin’ life like a grown-up version of Preston Waters from Blank Check. But it wasn’t a dream for the four just arrested for tricking thousands into donating to their charities that branded themselves as Israel-related causes. Nineteen charities, all given Jewish names, like Bnei Torah or Israel Leukemia and Cancer Society, were exposed (Zipken 2013: no page, emphasis added). Want to find the latest on the Bernard Madoff scandal? You probably can’t do much better than a blog launched Wednesday by Los Angeles weekly the Jewish Journal. The name? Swindler’s List. [nod to popular blockbusting, Jewish-themed movie Schindler's List] ( Variety.com, December 17, 2008). Although aggressive grievance-shopping and minority watchdog groups might be expected to ride the controversy, the problem -to name one- of the great percentage of substandard or counterfeit drugs destined to developing countries -and relative human consequences- is best left alone:”In Africa the situation is extremely serious. Half of the malaria medication sold there could be ineffective or even harmful. ”2164. 2162 2163 2164
Jenkins 2012:no page. 1996. Problems Of Fake...2010: no page.
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Those are just a few of the countless cases involving charities and other agencies purported to relieve this, that or another plight or catastrophe. Almost on the same pace - according to titles on prominent Italian newspapers- U.N. FAO spends only about 50% of its 929.8 million budget (2008-9) on actual help to the poor and the needy. The rest goes into bureaucracy, studies, information analysis and princely wages2165.
Millionaire donations via SMS or phone to the victims of yet another natural disaster (Emilia, Italy, 2012) have been directed not to such victims, but to an 'international consortium' in charge of 'running relief programs' in collaboration with a string of involved parties such as banks. In 2017, 33 million euros of donations via phone or SMS to the victims of yet another earthquake ( Marche, Italy, 2016) appear either “missing” or as having being spent “elsewhere” while the disaster-struck areas lay still in ruins 2166. ADNKRONOS2167 informs how an investigation showed “missing” amounts from a fund Italian party M5S was building to “help struggling SMEs”: euro 500.000, or in other estimates up to one million. The party retorts numbers mismatch due to miscalculation in good faith.
Ben-Shahar2168, however, rhapsodizes about the good will of Americans in general, and extols the virtues of many fellow Harvard graduates who serve on the boards of countless charities; readers shall come to their own conclusions. 2165
Redazione 2009:no page. Il Fatto Quotidiano, September 24, 2017. 2167 February 12, 2018. 2168 2005-6:lecture 3. 2166
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Party liners are busy hugging one another in non-dualistic rapture to celebrate the wonderful human soul, while gamesmen seize their profits.
Yet
hoaxers sit on both sides of the fence. Italian newspaper Il Giorno (21 May 2009) detailed how -in the L'Aquila region an earthquake had recently hit- out of 70.000 registered residents, authorities had received 100.000 requests for refunds and subsidies under the emergency provisions the catastrophe had prompted.
A man suing for damages for back injuries allegedly sustained in the workplace was shown photographs in court of him subsequently skiing in Norway and riding a motorcycle. ( The Irish Times, April 28, 2017). Fakelore can he either the total manufacture of lore, legends, and myths or the adaptation of original texts to meet a specific spiritual belief. The act of creating or rewriting stories does not in and of itself give a work this negative overtone, but it is the presentation of an entirely original story or revision as being genuinely historical (Alexander 2007:14). [I] introduced the word and the concept of fakelore, as a synthetic product claiming to be authentic oral tradition but actually tailored for mass edification. (Dorson 1976:5). But the question of popularization is not so simple. Is not public "demand" a direct influence on what is produced? -...- If popularizers are responding to public need in a manner (if not medium) similar to people who work in oral tradition, how can we call their products "fake"? -...-Paul Bunyan could easily have existed both in tales and as general knowledge well before the first known printed source of the material. He might have been much like Kilroy was to the fighting men of World War II. I have collected stories from lumbermen who knew the "idea" of Paul Bunyan when they worked in lumber camps before the turn of the century. Paul was one of those free-floating folk beliefs from which ever-new stories could be created by an ingenious tale teller or joker as the situation presented itself. -...- The concept of Paul Bunyan, and many of the ideas in those "fakelore" stories, may now constitute the authentic folklore of another group, the urban or urban-influenced Americans. (Stekert 1986:180-1). 1719
In all cases, the country in question was suffering from a severe case of an inferiority complex-if one can appropriately speak of an entire country being affected by such a complex. -...- Macpherson's Ossian put Scottish Highlanders on the map -...- It may be true that ideally folklore serves the cause of national identity cravings, but where folklore is deemed lacking or insufficient, individual creative writers imbued with nationalistic zeal have felt free to fill in that void -...Folklorismus, the commercialization of folklore, often results in fakelore of this exploitative kind (Dundes 1985:11-15) As Boccaccio put it a long time ago, representation (literature in Boccaccio's case) is a 'mirror' of human existence, whereby people see human miseries in action, and compare them with their own. In most cases, such representations are cathechted with quintessential, supermundane or otherwise doomsday characteristics that have people gasp for breath with ensuing gastrointestinal and neurological syndromes.
In reality, such representations are just what gossip is all about. According to evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar's 2169 hypothesis, gossip is what glues human society together: an equivalent of grooming in big apes. And what is gossip about? Exactly about what is to be shunned -or heavily censored- in polite company: sex, violence, adultery, politics, religion. In its progressive refusal of worldly attachment, Buddhism rightfully prescribes abstinence from gossip (idle chatter), and values silence.
In 1989 French noir (cop drama) L'Union SacrĂŠe sees a brash, prejudiced Jewish cop and a Muslim colleague in a team to fight a terrorist cabal while an erotic
2169
1992.
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triangle is in place including the Jewish cop's ex-wife, now dating the Arab cop.
Tense action movies might not suit everyone as poor excuses for political pamphlets, though. In 1990 grotesque comedy Heart Condition, a brash, racist White cop hounds a rogue Black lawyer. He, however, ends up receiving the transplanted heart of his Black foe, now deceased. Furthermore, not only does the cop collaborate with the lawyer's ghost, but he also ends up together with his former White girlfriend who -divine coincidence- was dating the Black lawyer, and had gotten pregnant of him: circularity to state of the art.
Just as (unchecked) African immigration in Italy became matter of public outcry, 1993 obscure Italian production Teste Rasate sees a suburban bum in a relationship with a Black (illegal) immigrant from Africa. He then joins a Fascist squad: another political manifesto hits the screen, with a tragic ending, and more obtuse myths than one might count. In 1987 another such 'Romeo and Juliet' in (mildly) politicized sauce had been credited to top Hollywood director Ferrara:
China Girl sees gang warfare between suburban Chinese and Italian gangs as a backdrop. 1981 The Fox And The Hound finds two animal friends forced to become enemies.
How many of those reversal storylines are there? The shtick can also be inverted. How many divided loyalty movies (telepictures, novels etc) are there? Ben
Hur is a classic example. Peplum narratives might nowadays not satisfy many. Divided loyalties can thus take another garb. Instead of embracing what their 1721
ideologies command to oppose (the turncoat or reversal shtick), heroes can start to oppose what they were formerly embracing out of divided loyalty: Cain and Abel.
Postmodern White woman scoffs at tribal hallucinations as she makes an exogamic choice: a frantic love story with a man of color who's a true ladies' gent. The exotic chap initially wears three piece suits, and has a glamorous job. When she relocates to (visits...) his even more exotic homeland, divided loyalties kick in. He goes native, and she's threatened, abused, harassed, oppressed etc: what a blockbuster.
Exogamic options may be on a roll, but former U.S President Carter -in his role as worldwide activist against violence- informs 2170 how his data showed how in Africa, 90% (Egypt) to 97% (Somalia) women had undergone genital mutilation when young.
Black and White? Fox and hound? German and Jew? Muslim and Jew? Rich and Poor? Country boy and city girl? Italian boy and Chinese girl? Earthling and alien? Isn't that just a variation upon the good old â&#x20AC;&#x153; be wary of judgment/recognition/common humanityâ&#x20AC;? routine? Will one finally embrace or attack who is 'other'?
Human beings ride their high horse making supercharged ethical statements about themselves, but soon reveal themselves as pathetic phonies ready
2170
in Houry&Scully 2017:week 6:Interview With President Jimmy Carter.
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to turn their coat. Hitler Youth pupils embrace DDR Communism en masse. Accounts from war-torn former Zaire see mothers murdering their infants, or sons having sex with their mothers as invading militias threaten them.
We generally act in a way that is consistent with our beliefs and attitudes,but sometimes, we do not. In fact, the correspondence between beliefs and attitudes assessed independently with behavior is not as close as we might expect. -...- Likewise, you can have an opinion that is very strong, but that opinion could be positive, negative, or relatively neutral. And it is the strength, not the valence, that ultimately predicts behavior. -...-that at least some of the time, we may have only a vague idea of what we want. -...Rather than pointing to preexisting preferences, research on decision rules indicates that we often construct preferences in the decision situation itself.(Hamilton 2016:90-91,135, emphasis added). Jungian analyst Zabriskie2171 explicitly posits betrayal at the point of recognition of one's activated shadow towards a larger degree of integration, whereas J.B. Peterson equates betrayal with malevolence that shall be staved off. Robert Bly2172 claims “naive men call for betrayal”, an initiation the male “god of trickery” imparts, which is not to be “taken personally” 2173;”the definition of a hero: someone who may be betrayed with impunity.” (Lacan, 1959-60). Buddhism – and to an extent Hinduism- agree: karma is impersonal as the law of cause and effect it embodies:”It creates nothing, nor does it design. It is man who plans and creates causes, and Karmic law adjusts the effects ”2174. 2171
1986. Robert Bly (1988) sort of agrees: only serious betrayal turns boys into men. 1988. 2173 Examples are plentiful. Bankster pulverizes the savings of countless investors. Such is the world of finance: do not take it personally. Online Dulcinea/Dulcineo absconds with the money a lovelorn suitor wired in pursuit of some foolish Pygmalion angle: that's too bad, but s-he really needed those five (three, ninety...) grands: “dear John/Jane, do not take it personally”. 2174 From a 1936 Theosophical publication by Sophia Wadia. 2172
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Initiated “real men” (or women) are “capable of betrayal and natural brutality”2175, says Bly: the cable TV movie claptrap about the hero who goes ahead undaunted scoffing at collateral damage in the great cause's name. Overall, the gobbledygook may mean anything from “The second is the cosmological function of relating us to the cosmos as now known in such a way that its mystery can be experienced, that we can relate to it with gratitude. After all, myth has to do with attitudes. ”2176 to “shit happens”. Peterson also frames trauma (as consequence of abuse) and malevolence as the province of religious discourse.
Only with “incommensurate language” (= religious talk) can one discuss trauma as instantiation of a good-versus-evil situation. While he was falling at the hands of murderous conspirators, Caesar would have exclaimed:”Tu quoque Brute, fili mi” (you too [are betraying me], Brutus, a son of mine); to which Brutus allegedly replied:”Sic semper tyrannis” (this shall be the fate of all tyrants). Betrayal and divided loyalties at their zenith.
Professor of psychology and dating expert Welch chooses to ignore all the above as she forecasts that “[one's ideal love interest] has my back in every situation, and I can count on his support and good opinion of me with absolute confidence. -...-it means being on the same team—a team that’s just-you-two.”2177.
R.L. Moore connects (ritual) initiation with (extreme) humiliation. 2175
He means the brutality of life in nature, natural selection etc. Campbell 1976:no page. 2177 2015b:18. 2176
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People living inauthentic lives wake up through betrayal:”If you’re performing your social duty, it is not your act at all. Society has put it upon you and it will keep you from life.”2178. Kingma2179 also offers a similar concept as relationships go through “growth stages” that, once disused, give rise to strife and break-ups. People regularly flip on their near and dear, as it is the case with the families of workplace mobbing victims2180 in the mid- to long-term.
There is no limit to the sauces the same stale allegories can stew in. A comedy cop/crook, White/Black movie like 1982 48 Hours? 1985 Enemy Mine simmers the judgment/recognition/common humanity shtick in sci-fi sauce, serving the public a long-winded excuse for a situation involving a prejudiced White guy and his Black foe, which ends on a note that could have been lifted from any WWII U.S war propaganda booklet (minus the sci-fi elements, of course). If a remake of
Karate Kid in Afro-American sauce has been released, rumor has it someone's considering a Black remake of Rambo.
Miles Morales (possibly an Obama lookalike), an Afro-Hispanic character, is scheduled to replace Peter Parker as Spiderman in comic books:
Just before the turn of the last millennium, the National Catholic Reporter sponsored a contest called “Jesus 2000” that challenged artists to produce a twenty-firstcentury Jesus. The winning entry, Janet McKenzie’s Jesus of the People, depicted a character of indeterminate gender and race but with dark skin and thick lips suggestive of a Native-American or black Christ. (Prothero 2178
Campbell 1991:145. 2000. 2180 People whose boss and/or colleagues apply pressure on in order to have them resign. 2179
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2010:38). Improbable sci-fi characters frothing at the mouth might not be one's favorite choice, so the evergreen White and Black situation may become a 'Manhattan meets Harlem' comedy as Diff'rent Strokes (1978-86); this time the twist is no longer crook versus cop, but rich versus poor. Diff'rent Strokes
was so
successful that a duplicate series ( Webster, 1983-89) was created: another AfroAmerican midget (1,3 meter tall) joins a White family of Greek heritage in a diversity feast.
Escapist fare, creative diversion and nowheres of one eccentric kind or another end up looking like circular, xeroxed parodies of war propaganda, and the fixations of the 1960s, a weird period drama:”by 1850 almost any book by or about a Negro was in great demand [in America and England]” (=the rise of melanocracy).
TOKYO — WHEN Ariana Miyamoto was crowned Miss Universe Japan 2015, participants said she stole the show with a saucy strut, an infectious smile and a calm self-confidence that belied her 21 years. But it was not just her beauty and poise that catapulted her to national attention. Ms. Miyamoto is one of only a tiny handful of “hafu,” or Japanese of mixed race, to win a major beauty pageant in proudly homogeneous Japan. And she is the first half-black woman ever to do so. (Fackler 2015:no page). HONG KONG — A museum in China this week removed a photography exhibit, which juxtaposed images of wild African animals with black African people, after complaints that the display was racist. (The New York Times, October 13, 2017). For the second year in a row, a biracial woman has won a national beauty pageant in Japan as Japanese-Indian Priyanka Yoshikawa took out the coveted title of Miss Japan 2016. -...-Born in Tokyo to 1726
an Indian father and a Japanese mother, Yoshikawa is what the Japanese call a 'hafu', derived from the English word for half. ( SBS News, September 6, 2016). A poster for 1975 blaxploitation movie Mandingo (a raunchy interracial story) recites:”Expect the savage. The sensual. The shocking. The sad. The powerful. The shameful. Expect all that the motion picture screen never dared to show before. Expect the truth.”2181. The public eagerly embraces counter-cultural truth that exposes the sham of a romantic version of antebellum U.S South. Those racist rebels in the South do are phonies busy being violent and/or sexual with Africans around the clock2182: everybody is a closeted thief, arsonist, homosexual...
Jefferson strongly disapproved of the mixing of races, writing that "the amalgamation of whites with blacks produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character can innocently consent". The results of blood tests on descendants of Jefferson, the country's third president, and [ Black slave-woman] Hemings show he is almost certainly the father of her youngest son, Eston Hemings. The results of the tests are reported in the latest issue of the scientific journal, Nature. (The Irish Times, November 2, 1998).
Mandingo turns into a never-ending lucrative franchise:
Furthermore, Robin Wood reported that black audiences in London applauded the film with standing ovations.-...-Onstott was content to let it remain his first and last novel, but was pressed by Lance Horner, an advertising copywriter from Boston, to continue the series under Horner’s direction. Horner, an open homosexual who was “fascinated by blacks,” 2181 2182
Cit. in DeVos 2013:5. The shtick has been put in motion later with a fantasy about Fascist guards being violent and/or sexual on an ongoing basis with other categories of you-know-whos. The mere suggestion that such might not have been -in part or otherwise- the case prompts psychotic crack-ups in schizotypal party men who couldn't care less about factual history: all they want is to be one with the crowd as they toe the party line, of the day of course. Again, the “disgust reflex” is but a tool in the ideological representation of society.
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wrote seven more Falconhurst novels, many of them containing homosexual interracial sex. Onstott and Horner never met personally and communicated only through writing, yet Onstott edited three of Horner’s Falconhurst novels with Onstott’s name appearing on the front. In the late 70s, Henry Whittington, writing under the pseudonym Ashley Carter, churned out six more Falconhurst novels, bringing the series total to fourteen books (DeVos 2013:18, emphasis added). Just as many people now might raise their hand to testify how they saw “with their own eyes” (whether “spiritual eyes” or otherwise) Karol Wojtyla who dodged bullets and paralyzed executioners with a stare as a Matrix movie character would do, so people raise their hand to corroborate pulp fiction like Mandingo. A man confided in a critic how:”his grandfather told him tales of slavery days and they were like the movie [Mandingo]”2183.
Elated 'fundies' also claimed the same after watching The Passion Of The
Christ:”Jesus suffered just like in the movie”, although Gibson took inspiration from the hypothetical “visions” of German mystic nun and stigmatic A.C. Emmerich (1774-1824) beatified in 2004. John Loftus, the former fundamentalist Christian pastor -now campaigning atheist - claimed on air that a tipping point in his deconversion was Mel Gibson's movie that inflamed issues of theodicy 2184. Even someone with three M.A degrees like Loftus didn't realize the movie constituted ”devout fiction” and “well-intentioned fraud” at best. 2183
In DeVos 2013:15. It won't escape readers how the institution of slavery had been suppressed for over a century when Mandingo hit movie theaters in 1975. Even if a potential “grandfather” had been a century old (with an average life expectancy of little more than 60 years in the 1970s), he could not have personally recalled stories told when slavery was no longer in force. One has to posit a “great-grandfather” -also a centenarian- who told such stories in turn. 2184 2009.
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The ecstatic crowd rises to a standing ovation clamoring for more:
If Star Wars really is merely "escapist fare," a lighthearted and diverting entertainment, why did such a wide spectrum of adults (as well as children) "escape" to see this film three, four or even more times-at first-run prices? Even George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, was surprised when a preview audience (made up of a cross-section of ordinary moviegoers) gave the film a three-minute standing ovation at its conclusion (Miller 1981:204, emphasis added). Sadly, toward the end of the film, our wise guide and faithful leader Dumbledore is killed. -...-Professor McGonagall, played brilliantly by Dame Maggie Smith, raises her wand to the sky. From the tip of the wand comes a single burst of light. One by one, each student and teacher raises his or her wand to create a constellation of light that overcomes the dark and menacing sky. -...-I looked around to find that two hundred strangers, most of them with tears on their cheeks, had their hands in the air, pointing their imaginary wands to the sky. Why? Because we believe in the light. Yes, we know that Harry Potter is not real, but we know that collective light is real. And powerful. And in the face of hatred and bigotry and cruelty and everything that dark sky stood for, we were so much stronger together. -...-Turn on the lights in the theater and ask the Harry Potter fans and their parents to discuss the pros and cons of public schools versus private schools versus homeschooling, Voldemort will look friendly. -...-All of these scenarios will more than likely fuel disconnection and reinforce assumptions that we are nothing alike.(Brown 2017b:75,78). group of some 100 white nationalists marched on the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville, VA, Friday night carrying tiki torches and chanting Nazi slogans including “Sieg heil” and "blood and soil” and giving the Nazi salute. The march was a prelude to a larger planned “Unite the Right” rally on Saturday to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in a park in Charlottesville. (Lind 2017:no page). In another context, stale plot contrivances aren't limited to movies. The best minds of Italian journalism and political analysis had no other recourse than to
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lift terminologies such as anni di piombo2185 (years of lead) and vecchia repubblica2186 ( old republic) from the antipodal context of Brazilian history ( anos de chumbo2187,
repùblica velha2188) to pass them off as the gem of an acumen that so often eludes the common man, especially when not familiar with Brazilian history.
If Estado Novo (new State) was the dirigiste and monocratic political regime in Portugal since 1933 (and in Brazil since 1937), Roosevelt had his New Deal (also from 1933); in Germany, too, novelty took power in 1933:”I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis -- broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe. ” claimed gleefully another dirigiste and statist caudillo, F.D. Roosevelt as he was inaugurated President in 1933.
As U.S conservative author J. Goldberg endlessly points out, social alchemy from the U.S “liberal left” can be hardly told apart from that of European Fascism.
In 1920 the Nazi Party issued its "unalterable" and "eternal" party platform, co-written by Hitler and Anton Drexler and dedicated to 2185
A period of unrest in the 1970s characterized by agitations and terrorist acts. In the early 1990s, repeated corruption scandals brought about the demise of the parties up until then pivotal in forming a government. From the foam of the severed genitals of said parties, new ones would soon form such as Berlusconi's Forza Italia and Alleanza Nazionale. It isn't mere speculation to remark how the peak of the former Communist block's implosion unleashed political catastrophes elsewhere. 2187 Referred to a period of alleged stronger repression under the military regime. 2188 The first Republican regime of Brazil, typically said to last from 1889 to 1930. Alternatively referred to as Primeira Republica, another idiom (Prima Repubblica) the golden minds of Italian journalism and politics shamelessly borrowed. It shall be emphasized how Brazil underwent radical regime changes, while Italy remained under the same constitutional arrangement. 2186
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the overarching principle that the "common good must come before selfinterest." Aside from the familiar appeals to Germany for the Germans and denunciation of the Treaty of Versailles, the most striking thing about the platform was its concerted appeal to socialistic and populist economics, including providing a livelihood for citizens; abolition of income from interest; the total confiscation of war profits; the nationalization of trusts; shared profits with labor; expanded old-age pensions; "communalization of department stores" the execution of "usurers" regardless of race; and the outlawing of child labor. -...- So, we are supposed to see a party in favor of universal education, guaranteed employment, increased entitlements for the aged, the expropriation of land without compensation, the nationalization of industry, the abolition of market-based lending--a.k.a. "interest slavery"--the expansion of health services, and the abolition of child labor as objectively and obviously right-wing. -...- Surely we've learned from the parade of horribles on offer in the twentieth century that nationalism isn't inherently right-wing--unless we're prepared to call Stalin, Castro, Arafat, Chavez, Guevara, Pol Pot, and, for that matter, Woodrow Wilson,Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, right-wingers. (Goldberg 2007:43-44). Lefty pressure groups in Italy talk about the pursuit of diritti civili for the GLBT community, which is a nonsensical translation of U.S “civil rights” that -through the omnipresent anglicized pidgin- transit from the advocacy on behalf of people of color to that in favor of any and all groups on the usual ground of “emotional truth”. In Italy, however, “voter registration” Blacks could be denied in the USA had never been an issue.
All in all, nothing so different from filmmakers recycling the same stale plot contrivances over and over. If most are familiar with the jingle associated with the early Rocky movies, few may have noticed the Italian movie Bomber -also using boxing as main storyline- offered a slightly modified rip-off jingle in the same way as the row of Star Wars rip-off movies were modeled after the blockbusting original. 1731
In fact, beside the shrewd con-men and media experts running the 'show' for tangible gains, there is the faceless public -being bilked (directly or by proxy) on the other side of the curtain- that wants to desperately believe in order to make a statement about itself.
In a TV ad, average Joe -who had the taste to choose a particular liquor brand over others- was instantly transfigured into the paladin at a medieval King's court. NLP votaries who undertake to help you being “irresistible” at closing sales; masculinity activists who pledge to restore one's shattered inner self smoldering in shame; telemarketers who have products on shelf... all promise to “knight”, “initiate”, “consecrate” the lucky buyer, subscriber or adept:”People who feel like they’ve taken heroic action are also much more likely to become evangelists for your product, because telling their story of success makes them feel heroic all over again.”.
”Hence the incidents are fantastic and "unreal": they represent psychological, not physical, triumphs.”;”folklure is the calculated association of folkloristic concepts with manufactured products, usually through one form or another of the media, in the sole interest of commercial gain.”; “[advertising professionals] are using initiatory energies to manipulate -...- you'll see a lot of initiatory energy in commercials”2189.
Are fantasies of (improbable) medieval manhood not one's cup of tea? In 2189
Moore 2001:part 6.
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another Italian commercial of the 1980s (36 seconds), an executive in a tense reunion with his staff receives a phone call, then announces:”we're the sole agent”. He then presses a button, and a malt liquor bottle appears: “your choices are always the epitome of success” quips an adoring subordinate having a toast with the executive.
The pathetic Hulk Hogan song of the 1980s illustrates this well:
I am a real American, Fight for the rights of every man, I am a real American, fight for what's right, fight for your life -...-. I gotta be a man; I can't let it slide, -...- I feel strong about right and wrong, And I don't take trouble for very long, I got something deep inside of me, and courage is the thing that keeps us free Is this not another exemplum? Instead of a muscle-bound behemoth performing choreographed stunts for a paid audience, could this not be a sonnet introducing Hercules, Menelaus or some other ancient hero? Couldn't the song be a slogan for the Trojan war? Or perhaps the invasion (pacification, plundering, liberation...) of Iraq and Afghanistan? Isn't it telling how Hulk Hogan publicly referred to his fans as “little Hulkamaniacs” although most of them were adults, more or less young but decidedly not “little”?
Isn't the purpose of this to allow the “pencil-necked sweat-hogs” (in the oft-recurring words of deceased wrestler Rick Rude and his wrestler-stripper persona) -or “pigs” (in the words of deceased wrestler turned manager Freddie Blassie ) - in the audience to overcome some of their frustrations by identifying with
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the lyrics' myth that becomes fact as Hulk Hogan battles evil Russian Nikolai Volkoff, Iranian Iron Sheikh, or the American traitor -now in the service of Iraq's general Adnan ( =a Saddam Hussein lookalike)- Sargent Slaughter?
Wouldn't the same words go down in history if some politician -however scandal-ridden and discredited- pronounced them igniting “fire in the minds of men” with various slogans, images2190 and bandwagon appeals? “ Mos requires neither deliberation, nor judgment, but praise or blame”.
Therefore, when people want to make ethically (=credibility issues) supercharged statements about themselves (by sharing beliefs, parroting slogans, trying to be one with the entranced pack etc), they hope that the 'shoe' of the
exemplum they have in mind will fit them like a glove:”is it so far-fetched to assume that -...- the native, who wishing to be gifted with the strength and stamina of the vulture wears a wingbone from that animal?”.
Exemplum (or the bank of images, situations, characters and expectations associated therewith) is what matters here, and not just one of those fossilized characters embedded in it. Hulk Hogan is not just another muscle-bound behemoth, for Sargent Slaughter and Nikolai Volkoff fit that description, too. Hulk Hogan -on the other hand- is the muscle-bound behemoth who “is a real American fighting for what's right”, whose slogan axes around prayers and vitamins. Even the slogan of 2190
Thinking of imagery having made long journeys, the rose (or the western equivalent of the eastern lotus) is a symbol of spiritual alchemy and ensuing realization, from medieval Roman De La Rose to freemasonry. Cfr. Doane (1882:486ss) on the image of the heavenly rose (possibly on a cross) as symbol of salvation. Once implanted in China, Nestorian Christianity adopted the lotus alongside the cross as spiritual symbols.
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fighting for what is right wasn't even new, being already adopted in Japanese wrestling-themed cartoon Tiger Mask (1969-71).
Adrian Adonis - the deceased wrestler cultivating his 'queer' image and attire - was in fact a great performer, but he definitely could not replace Hogan in the context/exemplum at hand:”La condition de vedette est la spécialisation du vécu
apparent, l’objet de l’identification à la vie apparente sans profondeur ” (being a star corresponds especially to life as it is represented: it identifies itself with life made manifest without any depth)2191 .
Mystics and pseudo-mystics also spin the same bundle of wisdom capsules worth of Chinese fortune cookies to unimaginable lengths; commercial filmmakers then compress and prettify the jumble to delight the fans of gnostic movies. Again, gnostic tirades that send the mind into aesthetic arrest may come from all sorts of sources: exotic gurus, action movie heroes, religionists, Marxist theorists like Debord or Foucault.
There may even be no source at all like. “The postmodern generator”, is a computer script that randomly generates paragraphs that sound as academic and as meaningful as anything one might read in Derrida, Foucault or Debord. It becomes increasingly difficult to tell apart the public going berserk or into conniptions watching wrestling as entertainment, from the public having the same neurological syndromes when it's about 'serious things', wherever the threshold sits in one's 2191
Debord 1967: point 60.
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opinion.
Is this comparison too stretched? Not exactly. On January 25, 1975 2192, “a stout black man in his 40s with a goatee and mustaches”,”who was shouting complaints about a referee's decision, suddenly pulled a gun and began firing toward the ring. Five spectators were wounded”. What's the difference between this event, and patriotic UK mobs raiding stores with German names during WWI, or NSDAP squads attacking Jewish stores in Germany in 1938? May, 29 1985 during a soccer match Juventus-Liverpool at Bruxelles, UK hooligans attacked the Italian team's supporters leaving 39 people dead.
Is the patriot a hate-filled, murderous vandal? A hooligan with a different cause, perhaps? Or maybe does the opposite apply (=wrath of the righteous)?
Partisans of “muscular Christianity,” recalling that Jesus “came not to send peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34), contended that their “manly Redeemer” would want them to fight for what is right. Christian pacifists, who worshipped a “sweet Savior,” countered with the story of Jesus rebuking followers after they drew blood from his captors in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:51–52) (Prothero 2007:48). Who can withstand [god's] indignation? Who can endure his fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like fire; the rocks are shattered before him. (Nahum 1:6). O daughter of Babylon -...-Happy is the one who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks! (Psalm 137:8-9).
2192
As the Pittsburgh Press reported copying a UPI press release on January, 27 1975.
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We think it quite normal for a deity, while if a human being behaved that way we'd send him to a lunatic asylum. (Campbell&Boa 1989:89). On
which
ground,
exactly,
is
the
man
who
started
firing
indiscriminately at a wrestling ring in 1975 Chicago a deranged sociopath? What about the hooligans in 1985? Couldn't theirs be the wrath of the righteous, too? Or is such frenzy just a colossal neurological syndrome? According to which principle are lines drawn about people equally flipping out, and committing acts of violence to right wrongs they find unbearable? Newberg describes2193 rituals based upon myths as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;morally neutral technologyâ&#x20AC;? to attain oneness within the group.
Is there a method to all this? The Vault Guide To Schmoozing2194 hails the findings of 'emotional intelligence' -expounded in a book by Goleman in 19952195- as golden nuggets for salespeople. On quite a different level of salesmanship, prestigious OECD's2196 Government Of The Future, urges:
There is a need to identity those special personal traits that enable leaders to deal with people in a special way and to provide them with vision and purpose. Organisations need to undertake evaluation of emotional intelligence characteristics such as those identified by Daniel Goleman to ensure that such characteristics are identified and developed in managers and potential managers (2000:233). Furthermore, Goleman has been criticized for extolling the virtues of emotional intelligence, praising those who apparently possess it to a high degree, but not going beyond anecdotes when it comes to achieving or significantly 2012:The Brain And Religious Rituals. 2002. 2195 Apparently the concept is not originally Goleman's. Goleman possibly borrowed it from an obscure scientific paper (Emotional Intelligence) by Salovey&Mayer written in 1990, 5/6 years before Goleman's book. 2196 2000. 2193 2194
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increasing the elusive ability. Other theorists and consultants -such as Livermorerestyle the elusive thing as “cultural intelligence”. “Emotional intelligence” applied to cross-cultural contexts possibly means being “culturally sensitive” yet in so many more words. Emotional intelligence acts therefore like Buddha nature, Haché, Chi, Mana, Num, Ain Sof, Pneuma, Prana or some other elusive quality present in different degrees.
Manzke2197 lists Goleman's “critical emotional competence skills” that he ascribes to Abraham Lincoln:
1. Knowing and monitoring your emotions.
2. Managing your emotions.
3. Motivation by using emotions.
4. Recognizing another's emotions.
5. Handling relationships -...- [or] managing emotions in others.
It is difficult to say what the difference in skills may be between a successful crisis center counselor doing her job to make ends meet; a salesman (or the like); a poker-faced 'adviser' selling junk shares; the creative writer of preposterous 'glurge' to chain-mail online, and a politician having people believe his
2197
2008:24ss.
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promise to build the next bridge over a river that doesn't even exist 2198.
It shall be noted in passing how fences, bridges and the like imagery are the stuff of legend when it comes to myths and pseudo-myths. Jungian anthropologist Angeles Arrien connects the image of a bridge to the archetype of the “great crossing”2199, and to a skeleton that beckons new beginnings through initiatic death.
Let's just think about medieval Japanese Buddhist monks specializing in bridge-building as meritorious deed. Also, the Pope is still referred to using the Roman formula pontifex maximus. The pontifex was originally linked to Rome's bridges cathected with mystical properties before becoming the supreme hierophant of the Roman State.
Goleman2200 categorically reiterates that IQ, technical and/or intellectual abilities are mere threshold advantages when it comes to ultimate (marketplace) success and leadership. While Goleman understandably disclaims manipulation, and even sets emotional intelligence in opposition thereto, it is difficult not to equate his emotionally intelligent overachiever with a gamesman who is part politician, part mafioso and part high pressure salesman, for those who can tell the difference. NLP and marketing author Lakhani quips:”By the way, I don ’ t care if you sell doughnuts, diamonds, or document processing — the rules are the same, no 2198
Soviet leader Krushev was credited with expressing such a concept. 2002:01pt1. 2200 1998. 2199
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excuses.”2201.
In our experiments, we proved that running helter-skelter to keep doors from closing is a fool’s game. It will not only wear out our emotions but also wear out our wallets. What we need is to consciously start closing some of our doors. (Ariely 2009:90). What I’m about to say next makes a lot of people angry, but it is the truth whether you choose to believe it or not. Relationships need to be categorized by their usefulness. It is possible to maintain many relationships if you understand why you are maintaining them and what they are doing for you. Relationships also need to be a twoway street. If you are the only giver in the relationship (unless you are doing charity work) and the other person only takes, that is probably not a valuable relationship. In fact, it is probably a relationship that needs to lapse. (Lakhani 2006:64). The difference with conventional -or what popular culture regards aspsychopaths is that the 'emotionally intelligent psychopath' is more likely to ruin people by selling junk bonds or by voting a war declaration than s-he is by raping, mugging, stabbing or killing one in a ghetto, which is what popular culture associates with psychopathy in action.
Most of us are irrationally influenced by appearance, and Skipper [=composite, fictional character possibly mirroring former U.S President Bush, Jr.] has always looked good. He knows just how to smile. He is charming, and we can readily imagine him showering flattery on the boss who gave him the Ferrari, meanwhile thinking him the fool, and underneath it all being incapable of gratitude toward anyone. He lies artfully and constantly, with absolutely no sense of guilt that might give him away in body language or facial expression. He uses sexuality as manipulation and hides his emotional vacancy behind various respectable roles--corporate superstar, son-in-law, husband, father-which are nearly impenetrable disguises. And if the charm and the sexuality and the role playing somehow fail, Skip uses fear, a sure winner. His iciness 2201
2009:3.
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is fundamentally scary. -...- this is a leader of the community, in an Armani suit. This is -...-the father of two: This man is the CEO -...for goodness sake! Just what are you accusing him of, and what proof do you have? Who is going to sound crazier--chief executive Skip, or his accuser? And sealing his invulnerability, there are those who need Skip to be around for one reason or another, including people who are wealthy and powerful. Are they going to care what you say? -...-The prize to be won can run the gamut from world domination to a free lunch, but it is always the same gamecontrolling, making others jump, “winning.” (Stout 2005:43-44,49). We analyzed the succession plans of a few hundred North American executives and noted that the similarities between the developmental issues for some managers identified as “high potentials” and psychopathic-like features were startling. (Babiak&Hare 2006:230). Now, if along the way I can give people the pleasure of being scared-because it is a pleasure to be scared if you do it right-or I can give people some amazing landscape that they've never seen before, that's great, but it's got to be in service of something else. The idea of getting up in the morning and saying, "I'm going to scare the hell out of somebody" or "I'm going to create some wonderland and not connect it with some transformative story, something which is going to take the reader and change them a little bit," doesn't interest me. I need to have the energy, the motive force of a story which is going change people. (genre author Clive Barker in McIntyre 2000:no page). in a large sample of prisoners, -...- Psychopaths showed profound deficits in emotional intelligence compared to nonpsychopathic criminals. However, psychopaths had normal general intelligence (IQ) scores. (Kiehl 2014:203). The fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the beasts of the field, every creature that moves along the ground, and all the people on the face of the earth will tremble at my presence. The mountains will be overturned, the cliffs will crumble and every wall will fall to the ground -...-declares the Lord GOD (Ezekiel 38:20-1). Professor of management Brown also emphasizes the need to be ethical
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when exerting influence2202. Manipulation at that point would just be the lot of the underachiever, of those who ultimately strike a negative record or balance, of the fraud who finally gets caught red-handed and cannot simply talk his way out of trouble:”what may appear a defense mechanism to some is more likely a power tactic used to manipulate others and resist making concessions to societal demands”2203.
As this essay's contention goes, the effect is so assured and powerful that it is often brought about artificially, not only by entertainers or vendors. Aboard an aircraft carrier in 2003, President Bush, Jr. delivered a speech to celebrate the end of the invasion of Iraq; he dressed and posed in ways that many recognized as a staged allusion to the movie Top Gun.
Some clever salesmen even launched a doll
opportunely attired to celebrate the event, with a transcript of Bush's speech included.
The feedback-loop, broken-record interplay between the real world of policy-making and the artificial world of entertainment and merchandising is apparent:
le discours de Jeanne Poésie a des accents de féminisme, même si sa créatrice s’en défend. « Les droits des fillettes et des femmes étant encore bien souvent bafoués dans le monde, ce combat s’inscrit pleinement dans son « champ d’action ». Elle mobilise ses amies dans les différents pays pour retrouver Yang Chi, la petite chinoise, retirée de l’école par sa famille pour travailler dans une usine… » (Schiappa 2010: no page). 2202 2203
2013: A Model For Successful Influence. Simon 2011:004.
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Sesame Street will soon introduce its first HIV-positive Muppet character to children of South Africa, where is estimated that one in nine people have the virus that can lead to Aids. (SABC 2002: no page). Showmen mocked workers’ dissatisfaction by fabricating pointedly comical instances of resistance in press releases. Press agents for Barnum & Bailey crafted a nationwide ‘‘rebellion’’ among sideshow acts just as the 1903 circus season opened—the same season that canvasmen walked off the job. A series of articles reported that these sideshow workers demanded to be called ‘‘prodigies’’ instead of ‘‘freaks.’’ Ostensibly, they had formed a ‘‘union’’ called the Sunday Order of the Protective Order of Prodigies and threatened to strike and destroy circus billboards if their wishes were ignored. Reports of the ‘‘freak revolt’’ were suspiciously riddled with oxymoronic images and puns. (Davis 2002:80). Who is Jeanne Poésie [Jane Poetry] who lobbies for women's rights and marches to rescue a Chinese girl, whose parents decided she should quit studying to work in a factory? A doll in a line of new “intelligent dolls” to cater to the public's postmodern cravings.
One of the most recent rising stars of Italian politics is Beppe Grillo, a stand-up comedian by trade who years ago took up the job to awake the torpid masses to the backstage deals of mainstream capital and politics. His non-dualistic rapture helped him to allegedly increase his lavish pre-tax income exponentially (allegedly euro 4 million in 2005); the publication of official tax returns caused misunderstandings with his populist followers taking his onstage frugality seriously. Followers are also regularly solicited to send donations to venues 'the great man' controls in order to support 'the great cause' when most needed. Be it as it may, the 'anti-political' party he banded was the sensation during the last elections (between
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23 and 25% votes in the 2013 general election).
The entire operation – so contend some with some facts and names to match2204- would be orchestrated by public relations firm Casaleggio 2205. Said experts would -so argue the same- be entirely responsible for the content -and the steeringof Grillo's extremely popular internet presence and political persona employing strings of professionalized hecklers -so-called influencers- and mountebanks -socalled community builders-.
Grillo's internet presence alone2206 -according to some estimate- should yield between euro 5 and 10 million of yearly revenue 2207 orchestrated behind an opaque financial and corporate smokescreen. The accounting system and financial flows remain private, and disclosure is non-existent. Anonymous groupies online chalk it up to the great man's hard-earnt money: a matter as private as Grillo's conviction for triple manslaughter, of all things.
Not only is the main act a stage act – as in the situation comedy of yore-, but the public reaction as well is often a stage act the way recorded laughter
2204
Orsatti 2010: no page. In recent times the cat has been left out of the bag, and the P.R guru has appeared in official capacity alongside the 'great man'. 2206 As with all political or opinion-leading operations, there are the sale of various gadgets, and rights to various kinds of events and contents. 2207 “Il blog da tempo è diventato il punto di riferimento del Movimento e ne promuove contenuti. Il tutto viene realizzato con l'assistenza della Casaleggio Associati, che si occupa dei contenuti del blog e li promuove in rete. Secondo Il Sole24Ore il traffico stimato raggiunge una media tra i 150 e i 200mila utenti unici ogni giorno con circa 1 milione di pagine viste, portando il blog in testa alla classifiche dei siti più letti al mondo. Durante la campagna elettorale il blog ha fatto registrare un aumento dell'82% di accessi e del 96% in termini di pagine viste. Il ricavo annuo - stima sempre Il Sole 24 Ore - dovrebbe essere tra i 5 e 10 milioni. ” (Serafini 2013: no page). 2205
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outbursts or clapping of hands were to another class of sit-coms. Is there a method to the madness? It was documented how
Four experiments investigated the extent to which judgments of candidate performance in [U.S] presidential debates could be influenced by the mere knowledge of others’ reactions. In Experiments 1 and 2 participants watched an intact version of a debate or an edited version in which either “soundbite” one-liners or the audience reaction to those soundbites were removed. In Experiment 3 participants saw what was supposedly the reaction of their fellow participants on screen during the debate. Participants in Experiment 4 were exposed to the reactions of live confederates as they watched the last debate of an active presidential campaign. In all studies, audience reactions produced large shifts in participants’ judgments of performance. -...- As can be seen in Figure 3, participants who saw a graph suggesting that their peers saw Reagan as winning the debate rated Reagan’s performance more than 15 points better than Mondale’s, whereas they rated Reagan’s performance more than 20 points worse than Mondale’s if they saw a graph suggesting that their peers saw Mondale perform better, resulting in a net difference of about 36 points (Fein et alii 2007:165,180). Simply said, there's just nothing of significance in the gospels, which leads me to conclude there never was and the authors cheated, using the lazy tactic of making us think there's something based on audience reaction in the story. (Like a laugh track on a TV sitcom.) (Wojciechowski 2016:no page). In different years, Italian leaders of a left-wing coalition (between the former Communist party, lefty maximalist and reformist groups) Prodi and Veltroni (then groomed as possible prime ministers, which came true for Prodi) mingled with the faceless crowd up close and personal: Prodi assertedly 'arrived' riding a bicycle (thus giving the lie to rumors about politicians going around in princely convoys); Veltroni visited the toiling community in their dwelling places to share a communal meal while listening to their grievances.
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Giving people a sense of ownership for your success is a great way to prevent resentment and engender good feelings, such as pride and loyalty, instead. This technique is, in fact, known as a Clinton classic. During his tenure in the White House, Bill Clinton was known to go around asking everyone, from his chef to his janitor, for their opinion on foreign policy. He’d listen intently, and in subsequent conversations would refer back to the opinion they’d offered. When people feel that they’ve had a hand in “making” you, they feel a certain ownership of and identification with you, and therefore a certain responsibility for your success. (Cabane 2012:138). We ‘know’ celebrities but they don’t know us. The new community is not a reciprocal neighborhood like earlier ones. David Letterman won’t be helping out if our car battery dies on a winter morning. Donald Trump won’t bring groceries over if Dad loses his job. These vicarious relationships create a new kind of loneliness—the loneliness of people whose relationships are with personae instead of persons. (Pipher in Brown 2007:159). Celebrities are higher status peers -...-. The media is referred to as a “super peer”. -...- it is the “high status peer” itself. Gaining attention from this “super peer” is a major sign of status and a granter of huge social rewards (Prinstein 2017c:27,29). Sometimes we only think we’re connected. Technology, for instance, has become a kind of imposter for connection, making us believe we’re connected when we’re really not—at least not in the ways we need to be. In our technology-crazed world, we’ve confused being communicative with feeling connected. Just because we’re plugged in, doesn’t mean we feel seen and heard. (Brown 2010:24-5). Jesus allegedly visited and/or consorted with the rabble:”an escape from moral values, an escape from standards, a promise to be forgiven, or to be accepted without being respected”. In the Yucatan Maya village of Tum (Mexico), Hispanic Mayas take a statue of the Virgin Mary in a procession to each home in the neighborhood, where she remains in turn one night: god never stops visiting mortals. 1746
French President Sarkozy went on 'surprise visits', and was seen in close company of the disadvantaged, especially people of color; newspapers later hinted the 'spontaneous' meeting between the powerful policy maker and the 'casual underdog' had been carefully arranged2208: dramaturgical moments.
There is also material evidence of the [Ku Klux]Klan’s theatrical roots. -...-the Ku Klux Klan’s bizarre costumes and performances were crucial to its development and proliferation and to its prominent place in American national memory -...-Both Klan members’ decisions to wear costumes and the costumes they chose ensured that Klan attacks would be read as in part theatrical and understood in terms of popular entertainment. -...-The success of Klansmen in sending their complex and potentially treacherous cultural messages—asserting their manhood and their suitability as leaders of a new civilized South by dressing up in outlandish costumes—was due to the use of the framework already built in the early national and antebellum years by minstrel and carnival traditions. It is worth reviewing how Klan costumes, in particular, related to contemporary minstrelsy and carnival. (Frantz Parsons 2005:812-813,818-819). Italian ANSA reports (July 26, 2014) how Pope Francis I had dinner with workers at a public canteen: another arch-patriarch mingles with the last and meek. Celebrities take pictures with aficionados often for a fee. Such pictures are often dramatized (back patting, handshakes or other physical proxymity) to give a false impression of intimacy, as if the admirer had been a lifelong acquaintance.
One of the biggest mistakes that salespeople make is not being in physical contact with their audience. Humans crave human contact; it connects you, if only temporarily, and it interrupts people ’ s internal dialogue so that the audience ’ s focus is shifted to you. (Lakhani 2009:119). But what was most unusual was how Pesso created tableaus—or as 2208
Le Monde September 14, 2010.
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he called them, “structures”—of the protagonists’ past.-...-I then asked Maria where she would like her real father to be positioned, and she instructed Scott to stand about twelve feet away, slightly to her right and facing away from her. We were beginning to create the tableau, and every time I conduct a structure I’m impressed by how precise the outward projections of the right hemisphere are. Protagonists always know exactly where the various characters in their structures should be located. It also surprises me, again and again, how the placeholders representing the significant people in the protagonist’s past almost immediately assume a virtual reality: The people who enroll seem to become the people he or she had to deal with back then—not only to the protagonist but often to the other participants as well. (Van Der Kolk 2014:222,225, emphasis added). His crimes bore the imprint of each detail of his life. He [=German serial killer Jurgen Bartsch] "acted out" his pent-up hatred on the little boys who all wore lederhosen (just as Jurgen had done as a child). He butchered them with a butcher knife as he'd seen his father do while Jurgen was being whipped, beaten and abused by his mother. She would often give him wet kisses on the mouth after she had beaten him. Jurgen also kissed his victims. (Bradshaw 1998:110). Dramaturgical moments involving a personable savior and/or patriarch are innumerable: it works every time. Jesus ( Luke 19:1ss ) makes clear he wants to stay at the wealthy tax collector's home 2209, thus flaunting social stigma. Pope Francis I pretends to drink from the straw of a drink offered to him while he's passing amidst the Copacabana crowd aboard his jeep 2210. Gautama Buddha as well accepted invitations to stay without discrimination.
Hitler addresses German Siemens workers with the words:”I am one of you”, whereas African dictator Bokassa loved to describe himself as “just a soldier”:
2209 2210
Luke 19 Reported by Italian news site TgCom24 on 25 July 2013.
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Subtly, through clever banter, the psychopath begins to share bits of personal information, seemingly letting down his or her guard with us. These conversations resonate with you because someone is sharing personal details that reflect values, beliefs, and issues similar to your own. The psychopath’s second message is I am just like you. (Babiak&Hare 2006:76). It isn’t that everyone is doing it; it is that everyone like me is doing it. Early adopters of products are very susceptible to social matching simply because they are in the minority and like it. They have an identity built around an idea of being first and beating the competition. (Lakhani 2005:135, emphasis added2211). Again, social psychology's “leader protypicality” and a psychopath's maneuvers to control people look exactly alike: conversational emotion fluency:”it’s increasingly difficult to determine what’s a real attempt to connect and what’s performance.”.
Just as it might be the case with Sarkozy's (Pope Francis', Veltroni's...) antics, professor of religion Oden explains :”how utterly middle class were the first Christians. Christianity in its foundational period under Paul and others was essentially a bourgeois religion -...-. I can't think of any religion that doesn't say our sources were proletarian”2212. Just like the abolitionist, Marxist and civil rights movement, the middle class -whether male and/or White- leads one ideology after another from the pulpit as the unwashed congregation dances and applauds. According to news portal news.tiscali.it, Pope Francis I personally calls on the phone a list of casual underdogs: a young French homosexual ( August 29, 2013); an Argentinian rape victim (August 25); an Italian student (August 22), whom the Pope invites to be on a first name basis with: Jesus and the Apostles did 2211 2212
Vishton (2016:How Little Things Cause Big Persuasion) reiterates the concept. 1998:Defending Divine Justice.
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so, in fact; a 102 year-old lady, whom he thanks for the scarf she sent him (April 18, 20142213).
Underdogs the Pope nowadays calls or entertains are innumerable, according to the press. In 2013 Pope Francis I also calls another arch-sinner: Pietro Maso, who in 1991 massacred his own parents. Maso apparently became a person of faith who -in perfect psychoanalytic fashion- declares in 2015 how “I was what's evil” (“io ero il male”) to court forgiveness as he markets his memoirs 2214. Murderous sociopath Jeffrey Dahmer “found Jesus” as well: he was baptized as an inmate in 1994.
if beings of the present and future when on the verge of dying hear the name of one Buddha, one Bodhisattva, or one Pratyekabuddha, they will attain liberation whether they have committed offenses or not (Sutra Of The Past Vows Of Earth Store Bodhisattva2215) Is redeemed Maso ascending to the Catholic heaven? In January 2016, he is being investigated for extortion: he would have threatened people while he demanded money2216. Prodigal son of the Catholic faith, Maso would have issued death threats against his sisters claimed he “had to finish the job” 2217 he had started when he slayed his parents. Training tapes of major bodybuilding champions of the 1990s typically feature moments in which the champion fraternizes with ordinary gym rats while on film:”Jobs shares the spotlight with employees, partners, and
TgCom24. La Stampa, January 19, 2015. 2215 Buddhist Text Translation Society. 2216 ANSA, January 21, 2016. 2217 Corriere Della Sera, March 3, 2016. 2213 2214
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products.”2218.
A chef, also the owner of a noted company producing pasta products, calls an housewife -who doesn't know what to cook next - in order to suggest a pasta recipe: such was an Italian commercial radios aired a long time ago. In 2004, ads for Italian pay TV SKY feature international superstar John Travolta appearing within the life of an ordinary Italian family. In a travel show, the show host -who visits a sport apparel store that belongs to a tennis legend - needs help to choose her clothes. Out of nowhere, the tennis champion steps within the camera's range to offer his help: the patriarch arrives, or the famous Masonic motto Ordo Ab Chao (Order out of chaos).
In 1987, an infomercial presents an Italian teenager who hears a sport car screeching to a halt outside his garage: there comes Ayrton Senna, the teenager's idol. 'Great men' appear everywhere: in one's kitchen (John Travolta); in one's garage (Ayrton Senna). Fabulous Pope Francis I truly makes history as he utilizes a port-a-potty during a visit to a public housing neighborhood in Milan in 2017:”Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.”2219.
Even the promotion of an aftershave or malt liquor brand soon to hit the shelves can get botched. July 22, 2014, Italian ANSA reports how stupendous Pontiff
2218
Gallo 2010:9. Jesus and Romulus “share the spotlight” with the renegades and bottom-feeders they chose as confidants and followers. 2219 Luke 24:35.
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Francis I would have called the family of one girl abducted and brutally murdered in 2010: news would be on major newspapers. The very same day, ANSA also reports a statement the victim's family had issued to the effect they had no contact whatsoever with Pope Francis: the magic show of the free press.
Patriarchs â&#x20AC;&#x201C; leaders if one prefers the jargon of contemporary management theorists and psychologists- and their ilk appear on the scene and set things straight: the arch-trickster in regalia.
What about the horde? Could pencil-necked sweat-hogs wear the patriarchal mantle as well? Of course they can. For example by donating to this, that or another charity or emergency relief operation; or by voting for this, that or the other candidate, meek party liners can 'make things happen', too.
For example, this charity pledges to bring a smile onto the dear face of dejected children of color; that candidate vows he'll introduce drastic tax cuts alongside massive subsidies to 'make things happen' for both the middle class, and the social outcast:
I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, "Look, God's home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. (Revelation 21:3). My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people. (Ezekiel 37:27). If an object or person is to be truly efficacious within the community, they must be imbued with this enigmatic essence, this "power-tomake-things-happen", this ase. -...- Esu's control of ase gives him 1752
immense power, second only to Olodumare. Yet rather than distributing "logos" and semiotic knowledge evenly among his worshipers, he speaks in riddles and subverts attempts to maintain a clear, literal discourse. By his very nature, Esu defies categorization. Gates says that a partial list of his "qualities might include individuality, satire, parody, irony, magic, indeterminacy, openendedness, ambiguity, sexuality, chance, uncertainty, disruption and reconciliation, betrayal and loyalty, closure and disclosure, encasement and rupture"(1988, 6).(Campbell 1999:22-24). Jessica McClure was an eighteen-month-old girl in Midland, Texas, who was playing in the backyard at her aunt’s house when she fell twenty-two feet down an abandoned water well. She was wedged in the dark, subterranean crevice for 58½ hours, but the infinitesimally drawn-out media coverage made it seem as if the ordeal dragged on for weeks. -...- In the aftermath of the rescue, the McClure family received more than $700,000 in donations for Jessicaextnote. Variety and People magazine ran gripping stories on her. Scott Shaw of the Odessa American newspaper won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for his photograph of the swaddled toddler in the arms of one of her rescuers. There was a TV movie called Everybody’s Baby: The Rescue of Jessica McClure , starring Beau Bridges and Patty Duke, and the songwriters Bobby George Dynes and Jeff Roach immortalized her in ballads. (Ariely 2010:113). As this, that or another sublime deity out of compassion chose flesh to share the human predicament in order to bring salvation about (Orpheus, Aesculapius, Krishna, Jesus, Mahayana Buddhist Bodhisattvas 2220, Apollonius...), so the powerful policy maker – modern doppelgaenger of all those (semi)omnipotent patriarchs and shepherd-gods - mingles with the underdog, the best among us all:”Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”2221.
According to Xfinity News (March 25, 2011), Jessica -then 25- accessed a trust fund holding US$ 800.000 coming from the donation campaign (note of this writer). 2220 Mahayana Bodhisattvas can work prodigies and miracles. They also vow to help all sentient beings until the final extinction of all forms of suffering. They indefinitely postpone ultimate bliss/extinction (nirvana) in order to take up forms so that they may help as many sentient beings as possible. In some Mahayana schools, all things -including the inanimate- possess Buddha nature. 2221 Matthew 5:5. extnote
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The XVII Tibetan Buddhist Karmapa2222 Ogyen Trinley Dorje tells the same story at Berlin in 2015: the dialogue between mud and gold. While people join their hands at the Karmapa, another wonderful spiritual teacher so above the human condition, Indian The Tribune reports:
The Himachal Pradesh High Court today quashed an order by a trial court in Una to drop charges against 17th Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorjee, Tibetan spiritual leader, in a case of moneylaundering, illegal exchange of foreign currency and 'benami' land deal. -...-The searches at the monastery were conducted after the seizure of Rs1 crore from a vehicle in Una on January 26, 2011. (July 9, 2015). Stories emphasize how 'approachable' and personable salvific heroes are. It is equally difficult to disprove public figures (especially politicians ) are trying to fit that part. Savior-god-heroes often visit mortals in disguise, and/or share a sacred communal meal with them; Saint Francis hugged lepers; Napoleon, too, was immortalized while visiting plague victims in Jaffa.
Again (and again...and again) mythical deities loved noblemen serving as shepherds (Paris -who seduced Helen thus starting the Trojan War- was a Trojan prince then serving as shepherd; Anchises; Dumuzi the shepherd and mother goddess Inanna; Ganymede...The future King David of Israel also originally served as a shepherd. Krishna, too, served as a shepherd in his youth as the Bala Gopala (little herdsman) temple in Patan (Nepal) commemorates.
Mesopotamian rulers thought gardening a hobby fit for the greatest of 2222
There actually two Buddhist lamas recognized as XVII Karmapa by competing factions within the Tibetan Buddhist world community.
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Kings. Is that just a remnant of pagan imagination's figments living in the
achronotopos of the bygone â&#x20AC;&#x153;age of heroesâ&#x20AC;?? Didn't Saint Mary appear to a string of young shepherds and the like, too?
That includes not only mainstream sanctuaries known to all, but obscure countryside locations as well, such as Notre Dame De Dromont in southern France2223, or Madonna Del Bosco2224 at Imbersago (Italy). As well, godly shepherds include not only mainstream figures, but also peripheral ones such as XVII century Guatemalan Christian Saint Pedro de San JosĂŠ de Betancur (Hermano Pedro) who served as a shepherd in his youth in Tenerife.
Weren't Jesus and Krishna born among shepherds, too? When Arjuna (and his brothers2225) were miraculously born to Kunti, each son of an high god, thundering heavenly voices announced the great man's forthcoming greatness, and local people gathered to worship the divine children.
Furthermore, shepherd are not just limited to passive roles: St. Joan Of Arc served as a shepherdess. Abraham Lincoln came too late to fit into the pastoral scene, but he was assertedly born in a log cabin, the 'wild west', U.S equivalent of The story wants that on the premises stood a wooden cross whereby peasants gathered to pray. The virgin Mary then appeared to a young shepherd and told him a chapel dedicated to her existed right there, and that she wished to see it restored. The local landlords and the peasants then discovered the ruins of an old chapel (about XI century), possibly built upon a pagan shrine. A chapel was built there to honor St.Mary. 2224 Rumored to have appeared to three child-shepherds in 1617. 2225 Two of the five Pandavas were actually born to Madri, Pandu's other wife who would undergo the supreme sacrifice on the funeral pyre after Pandu's death. Madri, however, used Kunti's mantra to beget divine twins. In archaic Hindu societies, wives -and their offspring, just like fields- constituted the husband's property. The landlord retains ownership of the fruit of his fields even when someone else tills them in his place. Therefore wives and their progeny remain in the patriarch's lineage even if the child's actual father is a divine being. 2223
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the pastoral community of yore.
Of course, some versions of the story did not need to present the godly shepherds as 'real' princes momentarily toiling away, but simply as 'noble' as their hearts were pure. Madhu Khanna 2226 says that the message of Hindu tantra, with all the messing around with impure items and situations, is just that: if one's intentions are pure, the most foul substance or situation becomes also pure.
Japanese Empress Komyo (701-706 CE) received a revelation from Buddha in a dream. She thus undertook to personally bathe and cleanse 1.000 people at Hokkeji Temple in a time of epidemics. The lore has it that a particularly downtrodden man with festering wounds came along. As the Empress pressed her mouth against the sores, the leper revealed himself as Ashuku Buddha (Ashuku
Nyorai, Akhshobhya Buddha, Imperturbable Buddha, Free From Anger).
When the meek public kisses the soiled underpants of the next transgressor who gets “the runs” as he fears judgment, they are one with Jesus (Ashuku Buddha, etc) who embodies the absolute value of compassion and nonjudgment. Those who scoff at the disgusting image ought to remember how they, too, are deep down as tainted as the next guy, a closeted arsonist, thief, homosexual...
A story nearly identical is told in many variations 2227 about a young Black 2226 2227
2014. Helen M. Luke tells one variant in her 1996 The Way Of Woman. The story is at times labeled “an old Zulu story”.
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African woman, whom envious village women trick into losing her precious necklace2228. She gets a fabulous necklace back, plus many other gifts, from the river goddess when she meets her at the river's bottom appearing as an old hag covered in sores. When the distraught young woman licks the old hag's sores as she's instructed, a miracle occurs and she's also granted protection from a cannibal demon who had come to devour her.
When the village women see her wonderful new possessions, they, too, dive into the river to acquire them but, since they refuse to lick the old hag's sores, they are denied sanctuary: the river demon devours them.
The Tokiwaya Hot Spring purports to be Empress Komyo's spring:
There’s one very amusing Kṛ[i]ṣṇa episode, in which his foster mother is told that her little boy is out-side eating mud. She goes out to clean the mud out of his mouth, and when he opens his mouth, he reveals to her all the heavens and hells and gods and demons in himself. She is , of course, stunned by this display, and her relationship to him would be pretty well damaged from then on if she remembered it, so he very kindly erases it from her memory. (Campbell 1991:31). they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well." (Mark 16:18). It is in these verses that we find the famous words of Jesus that those who believe in him will be able to speak in foreign tongues, pick up serpents, and drink poison without suffering any harm. But Jesus never said these words, and Mark never claimed he did. They 2228
The women -who had ostracized the young woman- pretend to be willing to “make amends” and to rekindle their friendship. They lure her into throwing her necklace into the water as an offering to the river gods as they claim they had done, only to bring their necklace back from hiding as they ridicule her faith and credulity once she obeys. The young woman is of course so starved for human bonding that she immediately complies.
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were added to Mark by a later scribe and then recopied over the years. This is a fabricated story that has been put into the Bible by a copyist who falsified the text. (Ehrman 2011:270). The entire obsession about shepherds possibly goes back to the Bronze Age: agriculture and urban settlements prospered, and tension arose regarding the preceding -or competing, alternative- status of herding nomads (Cain the crop farmer versus Abel the shepherd):
"When Pharaoh calls you and says, 'What is your occupation?' you shall say, 'Your servants have been keepers of livestock from our youth even until now, both we and our fathers,' that you may live in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is loathsome to the Egyptians." (Genesis 46:33-34). Even in ancient India, it was considered a sacrilege to approach some sacred Vedic scriptures in an urban milieu, or after engaging in impure activities.
Jesuit scholar King, however, explains why would Jesus talk about vineyards, fishermen and shepherds:â&#x20AC;?He talks of daily life because it's going to be in our daily life where we meet godâ&#x20AC;?2229.
Savior-hero-founders -paying a primitive homage to class struggleseemingly love mingling with
bottom-feeders, the last, meek and dejected:
shepherds, fishermen, prostitutes, drifters, lepers, transgressors, slaves, beggars are purposefully chosen as their confidants, subjects, disciples, and ideal companions. Mormon Prophet Smith addressed thus a coreligionist who had betrayed him causing his arrest in Missouri, but now sought to make amends:â&#x20AC;?I shall be happy 2229
1994:God And The Secular World.
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once again to give you the right hand of fellowship, and rejoice over the returning prodigal. ” (July 22, 1840).
St. Paul explicitly discarded pivotal Jewish rites and taboos with the objective of making the new religion more palatable to the masses. In an era of communal living, food taboos; and in an era that valued gymnasia and public baths, circumcision would be dead giveaways.
Livy describes the bulk of divine Romulus' subjects thus:”Hither fled for refuge all the rag-tag-and-bobtail from the neighboring peoples: some free, some slaves, and all of them wanting nothing but a fresh start. ”2230. In Buddhism:
special characteristic inherited by birth was called jātimayaṃ lingaṃ. Therefore, thousands of species are different from one another on the basis of jātimayaṃ lingaṃ. As far as human beings are concerned, however, there is no jātimayaṃ lingaṃ. -...- According to Aggañña Sutta, in the primitive society the people were all equal ( sadisānaṃ no asadisānaṃ) and later on the various social groups emerged on the principle of dhamma (Abeynayake, ME6208 no date: The Buddhist Arguments On The Oneness Of Humankind). Marginals, inferiors, and others who live between categories or near boundaries often have an above-average susceptibility to paranoid ideas. By necessity they must be especially sensitive to threats to their well-being. They understand that elites are unlikely to be attentive to their needs and often conceal information from them. Many examples can be cited. (Hansen 2001:299). Savior-hero-founders of very lax standards who recruit the scum of the Earth (=restyled in terms of an awesome vanguard according to whichever scale is adopted) is not just a strategy fit for hero-saviors of bygone ages: 2230
Livy 1960:33-51.
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But I am very hopeful. There seems to be a new kind of Christianity emerging—a Christianity that is closer to the poor and broken people forsaken in the abandoned shadows of the empire. Folks are hungry for a Christianity that mirrors Jesus, not the judgmentalism that has done more to repel than to woo people towards grace. (Clayborne 2008:70). The Jews then were astonished, saying, "How has [Jesus] become learned, having never been educated?" (John 7:15). Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13). There has always been a small segment of society described as odd, off, peculiar, flaky, quirky, different, eccentric, weird. For centuries it has been anecdotally observed that such people are also creative. This oddness is typically not its own separate entity, but reflects a mild form of psychotic spectrum illness, usually bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Mild psychiatric conditions can include certain symptoms such as hypomania or nonconformity which seem to be especially useful for creative endeavors. Hypomania, for example, boosts energy while enhancing affective attunement— a mental state particularly useful in creative writing and music composition. (Polimeni 2012:87). When the psychopath convinces us that he or she understands and accepts our weaknesses and personal flaws, then we begin to believe in the potential of the relationship to go further; we believe this person will be a true friend. (Babiak&Hare 2006:77). Joseph [Smith, founder of Mormonism] “could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter, let alone dictat[e] a book like the Book of Mormon.” ( Book Of Mormon...no date:no page). As Muhammad was said to be illiterate, he had to commit the Quran to memory so that he could transmit it accurately to his followers. The allusion to illiteracy is found in the twenty-ninth surah or chapter entitled “The Spider,” when Allah addresses Muhammad “Never have you read a book before this, nor have 1760
you ever transcribed one with your right hand” (29:48). Muhammad’s enemies claimed that he had arranged to have stories of the ancients written down so that “they could be read out to him morning and evening” (26:6), another indication that he was unable to read and write. “It is not the words of a poet . . . nor the words of a soothsayer. . . . It is a revelation from the Lord of the Universe’’ (69:41-43). Whether or not Muhammad was actually illiterate is in dispute. One theory is that he only feigned illiteracy in order to emphasize the miraculous nature of the divine revelation and to remove any possible speculation that he had composed the Quran himself (Zwemer 1939:l00-120) (Dundes 2003:2). Part of the miracle of both books is that Muhammad and Joseph Smith were uneducated men when they produced them. The Qur'an often refers to Muhammad as the ummi prophet, typically believed to mean the unlettered prophet (Harris 2007:90). In fact,[foremost Theravada Buddhist nun] Khun Yay’s lack of education actually helped to legitimize her power. Her followers highlighted the fact that she was illiterate because this authenticated her ability to garner religious wisdom through meditation rather than through academic study. (Scott 201011:504). During that trip Ellen [G. White, Seventh-Day Adventist cofounder] had her accident. But I don't know if this was during the latter part of the 1836-37 school year (her third, not yet complete) or in the first part of the 1837-38 school year (which would be her fourth, just getting underway). We typically say that she had "about three grades of formal education." (Ellen G. White Estate, emphasis added) Savior-heroes (Jesus, Krishna, Romulus, Buddha...) love the rabble so much they forsake the realm of the high gods to take flesh on Earth. The narcissistic romance at play is obvious:”an escape from moral values, an escape from standards, a promise to be forgiven, or to be accepted without being respected”. Jesus refers to
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the Canaanite woman (= a proxy for all Gentiles) as a “dog” 2231, but when she extols him (=provides narcissistic supply), he relents and grants her wish. Lowly sinners crawl in abject self-denial, ashamed of their “polymorphous perversity” as they mutter the Jesus Prayer2232. Next thing one knows, Catholic priests, politicians and oriental spirituality gurus “screw” -whether sexually or/or financially- their gorgonized devotees.
It's a game of carrot and stick, all or nothing. Simon2233 claims characterdisordered individuals adopt an “all or nothing” approach; either they get all they want, or they think they are at the bottom: Napoleon and Hitler, not to mention their clownish imitators a la Renzi, Tsipras etc, are a clear example.
Saviors and heroes croon to the ears of adoring pencil-necked sweathogs:”you're perfect just the way you are” like countless pop-culture songs and books:
when people are not accepting towards themselves, they're often obsessed with being accepted by others; and even when they receive acceptance from others, it never helps very much because they are so internally self-rejecting -...-. Nobody will ever be as cruel to you as you're cruel to yourself (Nathaniel Branden). Ram Dass turns Branden's point inside out: precisely “because god loves me”, I can finally be at ease with my shortcomings and plain weirdness: “no clinging, no suffering”. Tibetan Buddhist teacher Neale agrees: the “mentor” one “Jesus responded, "It isn't right to take food from the children and throw it to the dogs."”. ( Matthew 15:26). Christian Orthodox prayer: Jesus Christ, son of god, have mercy on me, a sinner. 2233 2011:004. 2231 2232
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“chooses” for his Buddhist path (whether a living or deceased figure) becomes a “chosen deity”, the “wonderful parent” one never experienced in real life. One gets a chance to do it all over for good like it is the case with actioners: Rocky finally defeats Apollo Creed; Jason Stillwell ultimately defeats the Soviet foe who had erstwhile humiliated him, and crippled his father.
It shall be emphasized how the relationship between the savior-herofounder and the rabble in his retinue is eminently reciprocal: Romulus cannot become a King without subjects, and nobody else (better?) is ready to follow him. Also, ambiguities may arise regarding the savior's true call:”Then Jesus said to the [Canaanite] woman, "I was sent only to help God's lost sheep--the people of Israel."” (Matthew 15:24).
If founders Mohamed, Ellen G. White and Joseph Smith were deemed illiterate, or semi-literate, so was Buddhist monk Hui Neng (VII/VIII century CE): the VI patriarch of Chinese Chan Buddhism. The patriarch started his career as a layman, an illiterate kitchen helper in a monastery (Cinderella style) who (just like Cinderella) surpassed all monks in his wisdom. Cinderella in the end marries the prince, whereas Hui Neng becomes the patriarch in exile.
Heroes and saviors not only delight in the rabble's company, but also go further by engaging in the most frowned upon actions in its service:
Charismatic people are masters at using positive associations, whether consciously or subconsciously, and you’ll often hear 1763
people rave about how “special” and “wonderful” these charismatics made them feel. I tell all my clients: Don’t try to impress people. Let them impress you, and they will love you for it. Believe it or not, you don’t need to sound smart. You just need to make them feel smart. (Cabane 2012:89). R.L. Moore claims such figures embody the Jungian archetype of the (perfect) king: a person for whom “there is no triage” 2234;”Because we are humble, we do not pick and choose”;”And humans care about being liked.”2235: unconditional positive regard (Carl Rogers); “glorified babysitting” 2236. Tibetan Buddhist teacher Thurman agrees: “nobody is left out” by the Buddhist Bodhisattva on a “messianic mission” to rescue all sentient beings.
One savior may want to wash people's feet 2237; volunteers from most provinces of the political spectrum may want to go 'save' the dejected in the Third World; Gandhi challenges untouchability by performing menial jobs such as emptying latrines; Chinese Emperor Wudi embraced Buddhism, and later went on to serve as a menial in Tongtai monastery in 547 CE.
Some western inner city dweller may want to 'sacrifice' his free time going on an 'alternative holiday' in order to toil away in some developing country's outback. Masai brides approach the nuptial hut with excrement on their heads:”This is the general outline for an answer to why pollutions are often used in renewal 2234
No date: audio 2. M. Prinstein in 2017. 2236 The Dale Carnegie Organization pictures a PR person who routinely talks with elderly key investors about their grandchildren for 30 minutes: it goes a long way to secure their cooperation at crucial meetings. The clue (2005:disc 3) is to become “ assertively curious” and interested in things and people that may not look that interesting to begin with. 2237 This seemingly trivial purification ritual not only recurs in Mediterranean cultures, but it's also part of the traditional Khmer marriage ceremony. 2235
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rites.”2238.
But psychopaths, Ohira and Osumi discovered, play the game rather differently. Not only do they show greater willingness to accept unfair offers, favoring simple economic utility over the exigencies of punishment and ego preservation, they are much less bothered by inequity. (Dutton 2012:59). After he successfully conquered Mecca, and rededicated the Kaaba to the true one god, Mohamed (as both world leader and messenger of god) allowed Bilal, a freed African slave, to perform the call to prayer. Over ten centuries earlier, Upali, the former barber of Gautama when he was a prince, led -at the I Buddhist councilthe recitation of the monastic rule: Buddha himself had extolled his proficiency in that domain. In Buddhist Ghatikara Sutta, Gautama Buddha in a previous high caste birth exclaims in delight:”'Indeed it is wonderful, indeed it is marvellous, that this potter Ghaṭīkāra, being of lowly birth, should lay hold of my hair ”.
In other versions -as there always are competing versions- Upali is not Gautama's barber, but the barber of Sariputta and Moggallana, two of Gautama Buddha's chief disciples of noble descent, who also request Upali be ordained before them, thus becoming their senior: a metaphor for the new society's blueprint.
The rabble, in turn, heaps praise, titles, and cooks aggrandizing tales about the savior-hero-founder, which invariably grow taller by the generation. That's what Goffman refers to as the deference-demeanor dynamic:
2238
Douglas 1966:164.
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Today, even in sophisticated business settings, we still operate on hunter-gatherer survival instincts. When we first meet someone, our instinctive question is: friend or foe? How friendly are their intentions likely to be? To find an answer we still look to the clues that were so useful in tribal times: appearance and demeanor. (Cabane 2012:78). The rabble, outcast or liminal figures (women, slaves, beggars...) are those who recognize the savior-hero first:â&#x20AC;?Trickster figures have particular appeal to marginal (low status) groups. In ancient Greece, aristocrats viewed merchants and craftsmen [associated with trickster-god Hermes] with suspicion and disdain. -...-The affinity between the trickster and marginal groups is also found in our culture.â&#x20AC;?2239.
The person with poor self-esteem acts out of fear rather than confidence. -...-And in human relationships, such a person seeks, not admiration, but, more commonly, an escape from moral values, an escape from standards, a promise to be forgiven, or to be accepted without being respected, or to be admired without being understoodâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to be comforted and protected or else held in blind awe.(Branden 1985:80). Even Mohamed (Quran surah 80) at first scoffs at a blind man trying to interrupt the prophet's sermon to eminent Meccan chiefs. Allah then intervenes, and the blind man (=metaphor of blindness) is considered a sincere convert who wants -thus deserves- to be taught, possibly the inverse of those tribal chiefs who still need persuasion.
The rabble and the 'great man' become one:
2239
Hansen 2001:43.
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"The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'(Matthew 25:40). Whoever would tend to me, should tend to the sick. (Gautama Buddha, Kucchivikara-Vatthu). Vulgarity, scatology, and ugliness [in Sartre] all raise issues of either deliberate violation of civility or uncontrollable breaches in it. (Charmé 1991:30). To appease inner dissonance, the rabble heaps praise upon the 'great man': it usually serves as a proxy for some almighty one, in turn an ersatz for absolute values such as righteousness:”The idea of permission is ingrained in us from a very early age. Giving permission encourages people to take the actions you want them to take.”2240. It's a narcissistic dynamic of transference and countertransference.
The rabble also abjectly crawls in self-denial so that the deferencedemeanor routine may circularly unfold:”Remove from us the devious attraction of sin, tempting or misleading darkness -...- this tempting power is always there -...we would create for you [=the god Agni=mystic fire] the greatest surrender ” 2241. In the Gita, Arjuna and Krishna address each other with innumerable salutations and honorific nicknames.
Each of us has a powerful desire to revere the great man or great woman, to utter the thrilling words “Your Holiness.” Perhaps this is what Erich Fromm, in Escape from Freedom, meant by “lust for submission.” It is the stuff from which religion emerges. (Yalom 2240 2241
Lakhani 2005:132. Yatsenko on the Isha Upanishad, MAISI011 no date: lecture 3.
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2008:163)2242. In other words, when we are removed from any benchmarks of ethical thought, we tend to stray into dishonesty. But if we are reminded of morality at the moment we are tempted, then we are much more likely to be honest. (Ariely 2009:120). As children are abandoned, and the more severely they are abandoned (neglected, abused, enmeshed), the more they create the illusion of connection with the parent. The illusion is what Robert Firestone calls the "Fantasy Bond". In order to create the fantasy bond the child has to idealize his parents and make himself "bad". The purpose of this fantasy bonding is survival. The child desperately relies on his parents. They can't be bad. If they are bad or sick, he can't survive. So the fantasy bond (which makes them good and the child bad) is like a mirage in the desert. It gives the child the illusion that there is nourishment and support in his life. Years later when the child leaves the parent, the fantasy bond is set up internally. It is maintained by means of the voice. (Bradshaw 1988:185). The 'great man' then invites the underdog (liminal figure, pencil-necked sweat-hog...) to sit to his right-hand as vanguard:
And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son [=Jesus after baptism], whom I love; with him I am well pleased." ” (Matthew 3:17). Do you not know that we will judge angels? ( 1 Corinthians 6:3). He lifts the poor from the dust and the needy from the garbage dump. He sets them among princes, placing them in seats of honor. For all the earth is the LORD's, and he has set the world in order. (1 Samuel 2:8). When offering a reward, don’t be afraid to put it well out of reach, enticing others to push outside their comfort zone to achieve it. (Hogshead 2010:115).
2242
Noted Tibetologist Mullin is skeptical of the “Catholicization” of the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy, but it is a fact that votaries of Tibetan Buddhism most often relish spelling the honorific titles of Tibetan popery.
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[Jesus said:]You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. (John 14:4). With the rating information in hand, Ann and her colleagues could compare which paintings the participants liked more, the ones from Third Moon or the ones from Lone Wolfe. As you might suspect, when the researchers examined the ratings they found that participants gave more favorable ratings to the paintings that came from their sponsoring gallery. You might think that this preference for the sponsoring gallery was due to a kind of politeness—or maybe just lip service, the way we compliment friends who invite us for dinner even when the food is mediocre. This is where the fMRI part of the study came in handy. Suggesting that the effects of reciprocity run deep, the brain scans showed the same effect; the presence of the sponsor’s logo increased the activity in the parts of the participants’ brains that are related to pleasure (particularly the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that is responsible for higher-order thinking, including associations and meaning). This suggested that the favor from the sponsoring gallery had a deep effect on how people responded to the art. And get this: when participants were asked if they thought that the sponsor’s logo had any effect on their art preferences, the universal answer was “No way, absolutely not.” -...-.The magnitude of brain activation in the pleasure centers of the brain was lowest when the payment was $30, higher when the payment was $100, and highest when the payment was $300. (Ariely 2012:39). Consciously or not, charismatic individuals choose specific behaviors that make other people feel a certain way. These behaviors can be learned and perfected by anyone. In fact, in controlled laboratory experiments, researchers were able to raise and lower people’s levels of charisma as if they were turning a dial (Cabane 2012:10, emphasis added). Proximity to a famous person confers upon you some magical sense of your own immortality (Solomon et alii 2015:80)2243. The real key to success is making sure that people have a venue for connecting with one another, not just with you. When you or a representative of the company connects in the groups, it should 2243
It has been a longstanding Catholic tradition to be buried ad santos (in the vicinity of a holy person's tomb) and/or apud ecclesiam (close to a church) in order to facilitate the spiritual journey.
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be a huge perk for the group; it should make them feel very special.(Lakhani 2008:162). Jesus and his apostles; Buddha and his elders; Confucius and his pupils are no different from Krishna (in the Gita) and his vibhutis (co-operators). Krishna explains to Arjuna how he, the supreme godhead, is the Ganges among the rivers; the Sun among the lights; Vishnu among the gods; Vyasa (author of the
Mahabharata) among the sages; consciousness among faculties etc.
A slave woman recognizes both Ulysses and Ratthapala as they come home after the hero's journey; Magdalene recognizes Jesus after his resurrection. A slave woman/maid first sees Gautama Buddha meditating under the Banyan tree. She reports the sight of a god to her mistress Sujata, who feeds Buddha on the brink of death after 49 days of fasting, thus showing him the middle way is the most appropriate. Jungian anthropologist Arrien 2244 claims that in a choice of objects, questions and so forth, the “right solution” to “find the (lost) kingdom”, the princess etc is the middle one in folk tales the world over.
In 1906, a Chinese imperial decree ranks Confucius as “co-assessor with the deities”; the lore has it that Confucius, like Jesus and suchlike figures, was of noble descent, and that supernatural wonders, dragons and spirits greeted his birth. Taoist founder Lao-Tzu shall return as harbinger of a golden age after judgment day according to some Taoist sects; in 325 CE at Nicaea, Constantine temporarily macadamizes many Christian factions by proclaiming Jesus' divinity. 2244
2002:04pt1.
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Such is the case not only in Christianity, but in Buddhism, too, whereby -especially with later Mahayana- the praise, supernatural wonders and detail devoted to celebrate Gautama Buddha -and his countless celestial or spiritual counterparts- really know no bounds.
Buddha even turns into a sort of omnipotent, omnipresent, loving heavenly father-god. Taoism and Confucianism follow the same course, too. This is not confined to folklore relating to awkward figures supposedly greater than life, but recurs in everyday life as so many people routinely cook tall tales up about this friend, relative, classmate, confederate etc of theirs, the fish they caught or the beauty queen they dated in college:
The key to finding inner remarkability is to think about what makes something interesting, surprising, or novel. Can the product do something no one would have thought possible -...-? Are the consequences of the idea or issue more extreme than people ever could have imagined? (Berger 2013:27). Many tall tales that Trump told Schwartz contained a kernel of truth but made him out to be cleverer than he was. (Mayer 2016:no page). The lie about ourselves may or may not impress or fool its targetâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; but the fiction makes us feel better. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s as if the false self-image we create through cosmetic deceit is one we get to admire, too. (Feldman 2009:77). Do such tall and obstreperous tales not amount to a statement the rabble -by proxy- makes about itself? Much as Persigny in mid-XIX century France was instrumental in engineering Napoleon III's accession to power through deft political
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maneuvers, he also needed Napoleon III to act as grantor for his personal fortune (nobility titles, prestigious appointments, sinecures, cash awards...).
Do the bombastic statements, tall tales and wonders the party liner refers to the great man/idea not reflect -albeit indirectly- onto the party liner himself? Doesn't the party liner give thus unmistakable proof of refined taste and pinpointed sensibility, for s-he chose just the right idea, hero, politician or armband? Isn't the party liner in this situation acting just like another infomercial character, whose heightened skills or sensibility warranted the choice of the best malt liquor, condom or espresso coffee brand?
This use of the transference object explains the urge to deification of the other, the constant placing of certain select persons on pedestals, the reading into them of extra powers: the more they have, the more rubs off on us. We participate in their immortality, and so we create immortals (Becker 1973:148). but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good. ( 1 Thessalonians 5:21). Make a proper investigation first. Proper investigation is good for a well-known person like yourself (Gautama Buddha, Kalama Sutta). The choice, which the ad industry foisted on frazzled viewers through artful manipulation, becomes then one's own. Religion and politics plot of course the same trajectory:
For each of the three problems for which participants had to come up with their own solutions, we gave them a list of fifty words and told them to use only these words to create their proposed solution. The trick was that each list was made of the words that made up 1772
our solution to that particular problem and several synonyms for each of these words. We hoped that this procedure would give the participants the feeling of ownership, while guaranteeing that their answers would be the same as ours.-...- We compared the value participants attributed to the three solutions we gave them with the three solutions that they “came up with.” Again, we found that participants appreciated their own solutions more. Even when we could not attribute the increase in perceived brilliance of the ideas to objective quality or to their idiosyncratic fit, the ownership component of the Not-Invented-Here bias was still going strong. At the end of the day, we concluded that once we feel that we have created something, we feel an increased sense of ownership—and we begin to overvalue the usefulness and the importance of “our” ideas. (Ariely 2010:562245). By a pretty wide margin, the children [in a study] picked the picture that was the outcome of their own idea, not the one where they provided the physical labor. -...- What all of this means is that by a very young age, we already care about our ideas and are attached to them.(Ariely 2016:31). Gandhi's stroke of genius was to turn the Indian independence movement from the lot of intellectuals in galosh, bowler hat and bowtie, or outré insurrectionists and their secretive cabals, into a mass-movement that recruited the faceless rabble in rags. Ragged masses make history in thrall of 'great men': from the XVIII century sansculottes to XX century descamisados.
Gandhi himself left behind the galosh and bowler hat of his law career2246, and became someone who:
lived a very frugal lifestyle, scorning most material needs, in the 2245
The dynamics at work here are similar to those at work as religions or political beliefs “dock” across different cultures and settings. For example, Indian Buddhism docks in China, Japan and Tibet; the (former) Communist party in Italy adopts an identity to match that of the U.S Democratic party. U.S Democrats embrace British labour rhetoric; U.S Republican espouse religious identity. 2246 According to biographer Savita Singh, Gandhi earnt from five to six thousands pounds yearly from his law career in South Africa, “a very big income in those days in South Africa”, and rented an English villa in Durban.
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pursuit of knowledge. These Indian ascetic sages seem to have particularly impressed Western authors. Indeed, many authors seem to see Indian ascetics as paragons of self-sufficiency and other virtues. In some of the literature, authors use accounts of Indian ascetics to support moral or rhetorical treatises, emphasizing, eliding, or even changing certain details about the Indians as befits the particular argument. "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33, emphasis added). The best within the pack are the first to give the example, which -in recent decades- has been presented as the unparalleled pinnacle of post-war ethical thinking. To be more clear, Latin-American Zapotec milieus also prefer hacer el
balance (reach an equilibrium) in the collective function of justice based upon melodramatic displays and sentimental exchange of emotional currency, just as it is the case with Pacific island cultures2247:
â&#x20AC;&#x153;The language of healing casts the consequences of collective violence in terms of trauma; the paradigm is health, rather than justiceâ&#x20AC;?...- The last fifteen years have witnessed an unprecedented number of public apologies on behalf of one group for wrongs suffered by another. We might add to the list apologies by the Pope for past actions of the Catholic Church, by European heads of state for treatment of Jews during the Holocaust, by the Japanese government for treatment of Korean women during the second World War, by the Southern Baptist Church for complicity in regard to slavery in America, and a variety of other examples. (Pettigrove 2003:3,8). Yet, a substantial body of evidence, some controlled and some anecdotal or historical, shows that many victims seek forms of satisfaction, vindication, or resolution that are not vengeful even where they are retributive or that are not only or necessarily retributive. Victims seeking retribution are willing to see an impersonal, measured, and socially sanctioned act of retribution as 2247
Tannen 2004b.
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appropriate vindication in part because it represents a public and communally shared response rather than a private act of reprisal. Furthermore, retributive responses are not the only way to achieve a public and socially shared vindication. Victims do not typically seek, it seems, to visit back on their offenders what they have suffered themselves. (Walker 2006:89). Choice theory explains that the current thinking that they must relive, and even confront, the abuse is not only ineffective but can be harmful. -...-Revisiting a bad experience does not make you stronger. (Glasser 1998:274-275)
Hacer el balance recurs in several cultures the world over, for example the figure of the juez de las aguas (judge of waters) in charge of irrigation and water matters in both Incaic -later Hispanic- regions, and Arab Iberia. Himalayan Indian Ladakh and Zanskar also have a similar figure.
The pendulum of opportunity swings incessantly between bipolar opposites. Psychotic masses on one end clamor for total war in self-aggrandizement, and commit mass-murder; on the other, they put ashes over their heads, and abjectly crawl in unrestricted self-denial, as Nietzsche had explored in depth: codependency:
In many bullying situations, kids taunt kids, not out of hatred or meanness, but out of the need to belong. Of course, there are children who, for varying reasons, have serious problems and are â&#x20AC;&#x153;lone bullies,â&#x20AC;? but most bullying is done by groups of kids. When you talk to the individual child, he or she often admits to participating in the bullying only as a way to maintain a connection and sense of belonging. This is also true of gang mentality; hurting or excluding others is often a way members demonstrate their loyalty and increase group acceptance. I think these same dynamics often apply to us as adults when we are in group situations. -...-We might go along with the water-cooler gossip, not because we believe it, but because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how we connect with the co-workers 1775
who are standing there with us. (Brown 2007:180). It’s so much easier to say, “I’ll be whoever or whatever you need me to be, as long as I feel like I’m part of this.” From gangs to gossiping, we’ll do what it takes to fit in if we believe it will meet our need for belonging. (Brown 2010:28). Again, what is not only accepted but celebrated under the fig leaf of politics, religion or folklore, is typically shunned or judged a mental disturbance in individuals such as masochists enjoying pain or humiliation inflicted upon them, or sadists enjoying inflicting pain and humiliation upon others. Sadists, masochists and other purported paraphiliacs in fact enact carefully scripted rituals, dramaturgical moments: it is not just a question of slapping or being slapped around.
The inherently psychotic human mind yearns for fantasies of blood baths, ultimate reckoning, dismemberment and the like, much as it alternatively yearns for oneness, tactile hugs and kisses. Morbidly attached to etiquette and extremely agreeable, the Japanese committed unspeakable horrors when they invaded foreign lands during WWII.
Exchange of emotional currency bridges between the two stages: the (social) sacrament of reconciliation. The entire mechanism is one of (morbid) codependency. Society also encourages (as W.K. Campbell argues) pervasive narcissism so that people on their schizogenic trips try to emulate another bunch of dysfunctional narcissists from popular culture (actors, TV or movie theater characters, politicians...).
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People who -at one point in time- were bitter opponents busy desecrating one another's mystical bodies (= pervesion of participation mystique), are equally busy -at a later point in time- engaging in making amends, cuddling, brotherly embraces and reconciliatory kisses:”A experiência tátil seria, por assim dizer, modelo da experiência psíquica. -...- A ternura é, portanto, inicialmente tátil!” ( Tactile experience ought to act -so to speak- as model for psychical experience -...tenderness is thus tactile to begin with)2248.
In 1995 movie Crying Freeman, a mafioso hit-man weeps after each execution: what a beautiful soul. In Italy in 2014, a person murders three people he owed money to after trying to extort additional money from them. He even murders a “granny” (“nonnina”) who lived downstairs. He hides the body after a parting kiss (“le ho dato un bacio”) because “his heart was breaking” (“mi si stava spezzando il cuore”), and he was sorry about killing the “nonnina” (“ero dispiaciuto”) 2249: what a gage of emotional integrity, and tactile awareness. In 2016 a murder case reopens after 29 years. The presumed killer who raped and murdered a girl in 1987 is a friend of hers. He sent hand-written, anonymous poetry (= gage of common humanity) to the woman's funeral: handwriting analysis seems to nail him as privy to details only the killer would know.
According to Reuters on January 5, 2016, U.S President Obama weeps during a televised “gun violence control” speech: such a sweet soul. It is difficult not 2248 2249
Fontes 2006: no page. Numa 2014: no page.
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to recall the umpteenth incident of a Catholic effigy of the virgin Mary who weeps, which is later unmasked as a “hose job”.
This may look awkward to the casual observer. Nevertheless, humankind has been toying with such seemingly eerie concepts since time immemorial. Such figures as that of the “harlot with a heart of gold”, or that of “noble highwaymen” a la Robin Hood easily rally enthusiasm. This shows that various categories of moral defectives and sociopaths can -indeed- be better than the casual observer no matter what they might be up to.
Is it by sheer chance that both Michelangelo's Creation of Adam, and posters to publicize the movie E.T (1982) portray two outstretched fingers about to touch? Again, the great tragedy that shapes collective consciousness looks increasingly like a Tom&Jerry cartoon: a genealogy of hyperaesthesia (=abnormal increase in sensitivity to sensory stimuli).
DiMele claims that sensorial overload leads one to “fugue out” or to “space out”:
a proposal for an appropriate diagnosis, which we decided to call Developmental Trauma Disorder-...-.Having a biological system that keeps pumping out stress hormones to deal with real or imagined threats leads to physical problems: sleep disturbances, headaches, unexplained pain, oversensitivity to touch or sound. (Van Der Kolk 2014:126). Newly elected politicians compete to secure the approval of this, that or
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another powerful minority or organized lobby. Hulk Hogan vehemently protests he only bows down before someone who walks on water. Medieval knights received a symbolic slap on the face from their overlord: the only offense they were supposed to tolerate.
'Divine philosopher' Rousseau wrote about “le joug des lois, ce joug salutaire et doux que les têtes les plus fières ne rougissent pas de porter, parce qu'elles ne sont pas faites pour en porter d'autres ” (the burden of the laws; this burden so welcome that the most proud won't blush to bear as they're meant to bear no other)2250;”Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. ” (Matthew 11:29-30).
If the best in the pack are so uninhibited about their allegiances, it must mean those credos or values are the best, indeed. 'The good guys' choose only the best gods and causes, much as that nice chap in the infomercial always chooses the right malt liquor, condom or detergent brand.
This applies even when international stars such as Telly Savalas, Robert Wagner, Ayrton Senna, or Peter Falk are recruited to act as testimonial for Italian brands (a brand of spirits for Savalas; a tea brand for Wagner; a supermarket chain 2250
This definition sounds quite similar to Islamic theology, whereby the true believer puts god at the center of his life. Allah thus becomes the only reality the believer submits to. As this writing contends, the same ideas return circularly. Hindu philosophy equally preaches surrender to god. Ages before Mohamed, Hindu Rig Veda (XV century BCE or older) qualified the god Savitar (the creator) thus:”worthy of surrendering to ”. Medieval knights as well suffered a symbolic slap from their overlord: the only outrage they were pledged to suffer without retaliation.
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for Falk; a portable heater for Senna), which -of course- are unlikely to be part of their daily life to start with.
It all goes a long way back in time as part and parcel of the human mind's obsessions. The philosopher Dio (40-115 CE) had already depicted a King of Kings (in that case a young Alexander) being advised thus :” Will you not throw off this armour which you now wear, don a worker's tunic, and serve your betters, instead of going about wearing a ridiculous diadem? ”2251; another King of Kings 2252 (the Emperor Trajan) was addressed thus:”What can give greater pleasure than a gentle and kindly ruler who desires to serve all and has it in his power so to do? ” 2253; the ten main duties Buddhism prescribes to Kings include the readiness to sacrifice everything for the subjects' welfare. Jesus said:”For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.” (Luke 22:27);”Jesus said, "Let him who has grown rich be king, and let him who possesses power renounce it."”2254.
Popular spirituality master and former Harvard professor, Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) claims his Indian guru Neem Karoli Baba instructed him to “serve people”, whence his “mystical name” of “servant of the lord” (Ram Dass).
Ben-Shahar's overview of scholarship 2255 concludes that the best leaders Discourses,4, no date: no page. According to Rhee (2005:161):”Concerning the first title, in the first year of Augustus (27 BCE), an oath formula, “by Caesar, god of gods” was introduced.”. 2253 Dio, Discourses, 1, no date: no page. 2254 Gospel Of Thomas no date no page n.81. 2255 2005-6a: lecture 13. 2251 2252
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are selfless servants. Is it by sheer chance that immemorial, pre-industrial philosophies, Pope Francis I, and the best minds of today's organizational theory agree about the figure of the best leader as selfless servant? “rather, [Jesus] made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” (Philippians 2:7).
In the early 1970s, [ Quaker and AT&T top manager] Robert Greenleaf coined the term servant leadership after noticing that the great leaders throughout history spoke and acted as servants. Biblical leaders such as Moses and Jesus were depicted as servants, as were more recent political leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. After spending twenty-seven years in prison, Nelson Mandela’s words to the people of South Africa were, “I am your servant.” Great business leaders such as Jim Burke of Johnson & Johnson and Anita Roddick of the Body Shop believed that their primary responsibility as a CEO was to serve and be attentive to the needs of their employees and customers. (Ben-Shahar 2012:57). Friends, comrades and fellow South Africans, I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all. I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people. (Nelson Mandela after being released from prison in 1990). [Jesus said] For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. (Luke 22:27). For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). While many theorists pretend to have distilled the idea of leaders as “selfless servants” from peer-reviewed studies and forensic analysis, Varma explains the idea squares perfectly with traditional Hindu theories of emotion, and Aurobindonian mysticism:
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The coming forward of the psychic being results in a shift of power in terms of what element of our being exercises control over our life, from the ego to the psychic. This is accompanied by a major affective transformation in our life, as well as profound behavioural change. Our life becomes increasingly characterized by a feeling of goodwill towards all human beings, and we view all and relate to all in terms of unconditional love. And true love is not about taking or getting, only about giving; and thus selfless service becomes part of our very nature ( MAISI032 no date unit 2:7). Moore equates “servant leadership” with the Christian figure of the good shepherd2256. Why is this idea recurring circularly in spite of not resonating with most real-life practice as experienced from most real-life leaders? Are the politicking banksters (banda del 5% , five percent gang, from the loot they assertedly divided among themselves2257) behind the multi-billionaire financial crack of Italian bank MPS an example?
It is therefore not the main question whether this, that or another historical or pseudo-historical character did (or not) relish in serving others, or in being subjected to indignities, for it is the same old human mind's circular obsession at work, in turn inserting a character of choice into the petrified narrative and its high points.
Societies navel-gaze to foster eusociality. Self-esteem psychologist Branden excoriates the idea of selfless service as an unwise load of nonsense phonies -whether or not with discernible agendas- put forward: people ought never to ask 2256 2257
1997b:part 3. “secondo Cortese, Baldassari e Pontone erano “conosciuti nell'ambiente finanziario come la banda del 5% perché su ogni operazione del loro gruppo prendevano tale percentuale” (probabilmente anche su quella sospetta effettuata con la triangolazione Mps-Lutifin-Dresdner). ” Telara 2013: no page.
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others to decide against their self-interest. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others -...-One of the many distinctions between the celebrity and the hero -...- is that one lives only for self while the other acts to redeem societyâ&#x20AC;?2258.
This clearly explains how human mind's psychotic tendencies strive to recognize -again, again and again- the faces of the (semi)omnipotent patriarchs, saviors, heroes, founders of immemorial lore in real-life bohemians, debauchers, banksters, frauds, squanderers, mafiosi, psychopaths tabloids reveal as the real individual behind public relations' carefully painted mask of selfless 'great man' on a quest to redeem the brutish flock in the name of this, that or another foolish utopia culled from long-dead hacks.
Saviors and founders scandalize, scold and try to reform the mainstream. Marketing and NLP author Lakhani quips:
Understanding what the beliefs are of the people you are trying to persuade allows you to focus on building on their current beliefs rather than trying to change them or create a new belief. -...-People are most likely to change their beliefs when they are searching for a solution to a problem that has caused them stress, concern, or confusion. Emotional release allows them to create new beliefs quickly. (2005:93). They embrace the current social ethos on one end, and pillory it on the other:â&#x20AC;?But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already
2258
Campbell&Moyers 1991:6.
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committed adultery with her in his heart. ” ( Matthew 5:28)2259. Marx thought he had drastically improved upon Christian and utopian Socialism; Jesus wanted to perfect Judaism, much as Gautama Buddha improved upon Hinduism.
Powlinson2260 triumphantly announces that Christian counselors “have a system that promises to do much, much more” than secular psychological theories ever could. In the 1920-40s as paternalistic statism was so popular, disagreements existed over which variant was best: Mussolini's, Roosevelt's, Hitler's, Salazar's, Vargas'...
The result was a war welfare state, a phenomenon that became, as the historian Lawrence Stone observed, the norm for advanced societies during the twentieth century (Schaffer 1991:xii). The real inspiration for the New Deal was the Wilson administration during World War I. This is hardly a secret. FDR campaigned on his pledge to re-create the war socialism of the Wilson years; his staff set out with that goal, and it was heartily applauded by the liberal establishment of the 1930s. Countless editorial boards, politicians, and pundits--including the revered Walter Lippmann-- called on President Roosevelt to become a "dictator," which was not a dirty word in the early 1930s, and to tackle the Depression the same way Wilson and the progressives had fought World War I.(Goldberg 2007:12). Much as Social-Communist regimes constituted a sort of mixed bag, so did paternalistic-statist regimes. If Hitler was murderously and frantically judeophobic, “President Roosevelt today received the Gottheil Medal of the Zeta 2259
Buddhism imparts the opposite advice:”For one person may be controlled in his bodily behavior with his control in doing an extensive course of duty know to all, though his verbal and mental behaviors are not controlled. Then the latter should be ignored and the control in his bodily behavior remembered.” Visudimaggha, ix, 328. 2260 1995:lecture 7.
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Beta Tau fraternity. The medal was presented by Harold Riegelman, New York attorney, “for distinguished service to Jewry””2261;”Some 90% of the teachers “blacklisted” from working in the public schools in this period due to their alleged subversive activities were Jewish. -...-But particularly after Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected, those who had identified with Communist or Socialist values had thrown their support to his New Deal and become Democrats. ”2262.
““Many passages in President Roosevelt’s book could have been written by a National Socialist. One can assume he feels considerable affinity with the National Socialist philosophy.” –Nazi newspaper Volkischer Beobachter review of FDR’s book Looking Forward” (cit. in D'Souza 2017:no page). One mysterious character some consider instrumental in Hitler's rise to power was, however, the self-styled Danish aristocratic occultist, astrologer and psychic E.J. Hanussen, who was born H. Steinschneider, a Moravian Jew; Hanussen2263 fell victim of Hitler's purges in 1933. Other members of Theosophic and occult circles that had represented a breeding ground for the NSDAP -such as followers of Von List- fell victims of recurring purges under Hitler. After deputy Fuhrer Hess' unsuccessful escape to England in 1941, Aktion Hess saw the arrest and persecution of hundreds of astrologers and occultists.
Roosevelt Gets...1937:no page. According to news on JTA, Roosevelt -and his consort in her own right at other points in time- also received other awards such as “The American Hebrew Medal”(March 7, 1939 for F.D. Roosevelt). 2262 Shaller&Rosenbaum no date: no page. 2263 He apparently shared with Rasputin the capacity of hypnotist and thaumaturge. Just as Rasputin had allegely forewarned the royal house that a war would prove fatal, so Hanussen had purportedly forewarned Hitler of the danger of unbridled political maximalism. Both Hanussen and Rasputin issued precise prophecies regarding doom soon to unfold: twelve years of duration for Hitler's rule; a lease of life of about two years -proffered in 1915- for the Russian Imperial family. 2261
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In order for the rabble saviors, heroes and founders rouse to play the part of vanguard, taboos and virtues have to be redefined, often in a hyperbolic way that cripples the very concept of right and wrong, being and not being. This isn't exclusive to Christianity: Buddhism in China, for example, recruited among the lower classes and was shunned by upper classes at the beginning, which can be said of all major religions.
Isn't that the celebration of the lummox who becomes like one of the many almighty ones, who brings worlds into being by simply invoking them, or thinking about it? Furthermore, the image of the savior-founder scandalizing the mainstream is recruited later â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the criterion of embarrassment and discontinuity- to lend subsequent credibility to the whole jumble of myths, facts and pseudo-facts under the label such embarrassing (= contrary to the time's mainstream attitude ) facts wouldn't have been reported if honestly believed to be false. Conclusions also apply to UFO, paranormal doom and other extraordinary claims of all kinds.
Do transformational psychology pundits not claim throughout endless series of tapes, books and videos that 'the magic of will' can accomplish mostly anything right there and then? From making one overcome depression, eating disorders, grief, to making one rich quick in a sort of 'American-dream'-themed Michael J. Fox movie without most plot contrivances?
Both Hindu Vedanta philosophy and Jesus2264 claim that faith alone 2264
â&#x20AC;&#x153;He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering."â&#x20AC;? ( Mark 5:34)
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operates miracles. What about awesome Tibetan Buddhist sages who, through their tantric mastery of the inner world and its elusive energies, can purportedly control even the weather in the outside world? Does it not sound like another rendition of the pathetic fallacy?
How different is that from conventional animism, Melanesian Cargo religions, whereby the savior (=restorer of the societal fabric= bestower of spiritual boons), hero (=U.S soldier in military fatigue) and conferrer of material boons (=the Santa Claus motif) soon to return co-exist:
To encourage this, clearings were built in the forest to attract the cargo-bearing aircraft and altars (the Christian religious connection) placed in the clearings. These altars didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bear the familiar religious symbols of the Catholic Church, but crudemodels of transport aircraft. (Wotton 2007:1). When you know your archetype, you live your destiny, not your fate. You live a truly empowered life guided by synchronicity that shows you the doors you should walk through and those you should avoid. (About Archetypes no date: no page). But since so many people have chosen to treat archetypes as part of a mechanical system that can be learned by rote, it is essential to insist that they are not mere names, or even philosophical concepts. They are pieces of life itself â&#x20AC;&#x201C; images that are integrally connected to the individual by the bridge of the emotions. (C.G. Jung, Man And His Symbols). Anthropologist H. Whitehouse relates a variant of cargo religion he studied in New Guinea. Locals there practice a form of religion called Kibo, according to which their ancestors -and not some character a la John Frum- would come back from death to bring the bounty of western technology to their devotees; 1787
the rain forest would disappear, and marvelous buildings would appear.
Fictional John Frum or Tom Navy are not expedient, either. The Prince
Philip Movement on Tanna (Vanuatu) hails Queen Elizabeth's consort -just as it used to be the case with Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie- as a divine being bruited about in local tribal lore. The movement has its relics: portraits Philip sent to his devotees on the island, and group photographs tribesmen took with Prince Philip during a visit to England:”Tom Navy is believed to be Thomas Beatty, a missionary from Mississippi who served in the Navy during the war.”2265.
Magic of will, indeed. On a different wavelength on a different date, Ben-Shahar2266 pillories positive thinking divorced from action. The 'magic of will' is scaled down to -in more simpler terms- :'have faith in god, but tie your camel tight'.
Miles Neale and Ram Dass say pretty much the same. Those who honestly trod the Tibetan Buddhist path may not necessarily win a lottery to solve their financial problems2267. They may remain poor, but they ought to be able to see their situation through a different prism that shall make it all acceptable: god as “limit language”.
From “neurotic misery” to “ordinary suffering” (an auto-hypnosis or biofeedback sort of thing2268), just as Freud had announced in his 1895 Studien Ueber 2265
Trask 2016:no page. 2009: lecture 5.3. 2267 All sorts of problems may be at stake: it doesn't really matter here. 2268 Whatever devotional practice may not cure one's crippling arthrosis, but if one manages to self-hypnotize well enough to manage pain better, it matters little whether Sinterklaas, Jesus, Mister Clean or Tudi Gong really 2266
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Hysterie (Studies On Hysteria). “Great men” merely tell purely metaphorical deepities to help one tolerate life's existential torture better: third-rate pep talks at the very best.
Najibullah, Gaddafi, Elagabalus, Ceausescu, Mussolini, Jesus, Gandhi, John Lennon, M.L. King were killed: only schizotypal devotees claim there was anything to them more than a used car salesman finally caught in his own game.
If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty's hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." ( Daniel 3:17-18, emphasis added). If the mind has magic powers, everybody is a (potential) sinner (arsonist, rapist, thief...) threatening the entire universe through quantum entanglement, six degrees of separation, Buddha nature, the matrix...:”When the human mind is good, wind and rain will come as they are needed. When the human mind is not good, disasters will occur frequently.”2269.
Everybody is deep down as tainted and discredited as the newly roused rabble: shame shamanism. Conversely, “Spiritual Mind Treatment ” is what the U.S
MileHi Church offers following a “teaching based on New Thought and Ancient Wisdom ”: the mind as harbinger of financial affluence and sound health.
exist in the clouds as recipients of one's devotion. Castro (Tsipras, Hitler, Berlusconi, Amin...) may have really been the demented swine political opponents say he was, but if boyish worship of a political figure helps one cope, so be it. 2269 Wuling, February 10, 2013.
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By this very sophism, the rabble is authorized to teach moral lessons, and to act as vanguard. Pure Land Buddhist monastic Wuling, 'green' progressives, positive psychologists, chaos and quantum theorists, and a host of diverse characters all toot the same horn.
Modern psychology and progressivism adopt the same approach (for example: everybody is a latent homosexual, ...ist etc ). Criminals and outcasts ought not to be criticized too harshly, for we all are (potential) victims of innermost violent drives, compulsions, and bizarre twists of fate: depraved versus deprived.
Real criminals are just tormented souls who fell victims of their flimsy and unaccountable human nature -which is ours, too- and of a series of '...isms' that predetermined their fate, much as Christian lore emphasizes an inescapable original sin; the unavoidable chain of karma yanked by the almost irresistible greed, hatred, delusion, doubt, sloth and torpor in Buddhism; the pre-written Mesopotamian tablets of destiny (=the same kind of hard predestination found in Calvinism ages later2270) resurrected as the “investigative judgment” of Seventh-Day Adventists: an angel records every action, thought or inaction in wait for the final judgment.
The definition of the primeval pack of followers -freshly awaken to 2270
“To execute vengeance on the nations And punishment on the peoples, To bind their kings with chains And their nobles with fetters of iron, carrying out the judgment decreed against them. This honor is for all His godly people. Hallelujah!” (Psalm 149:8-9). “And all who dwell on the earth will worship the beast--all whose names have not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. ” (Revelation 13:8, emphasis added).”The LORD said to Moses, "Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book. ” (Exodus 32:33). Just as the first state bureaucracies coalesced, religion started to reflect the same with characters of divine organizers (such as Mesopotamian god Enki) and scribes (such as Egyptian gods Thoth and Seshat, Lady Of Letters, Mistress Of The House Of Books ): the divine power of the written word.
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truth, liberty etc- as rabble is not exactly some rude disbeliever's fancy. The 'honest crowd' clamoring against Persia's Mossadeq reforms -and for the Shah's return - is -according to mainstream accounts- an idle rabble foreign intelligence agitators had recruited in perfect Bernays style.
Ever since the arrival of fledgling Ukrainian democracy in the early 1990s it had been standard operating procedure to pay people to attend political rallies, but since the Orange Revolution the entire concept of people power has been abused to such a degree that it has lost all credibility. The Orange Revolution raised the stakes enormously in what up until then had been a relatively limited contest. It was a game-changer that made paid protests a central pillar of the country’s post-Orange political pluralism and in many ways guaranteed the rapid erosion of the genre’s credibility. -...- Before the advent of the Orange Revolution, paid crowds had largely been used as a supplementary strategy to harass and to embarrass political rivals. After the Orange Revolution this changed overnight and the mass rally became the weapon of choice - something which could be deployed to paralyze parliament and bring down governments. It proved the advent of an age of political tourism, with rural Ukrainians – largely from the Party of Regions heartlands of southern and eastern Ukraine – were brought to the capital in their tens of thousands to stand listlessly on Independence Square, drink vodka and goggle at the relative consumer riches of downtown Kyiv. The nadir was reached during the spring 2007 showdown following President Yushchenko’s call for fresh parliamentary elections, which saw Kyiv brought to a standstill for almost two months. Every morning coach convoys brought hordes of villagers snaking into Kyiv’s river port terminal, to then be marched up the hill to Independence Square. This regimented debacle of the unwashed went on relentlessly for weeks and led to swirling rumours about outbreaks of cholera as well as considerable Kyivite anger at the conduct of this bussed in protester army. -...- This rent-a-mob culture actually has its roots in the Soviet era and had been developed significantly in the perestroika years as a method by which the Party could mount a defence of its crumbling ideological empire by bussing loyalists to trouble spots during the rising independence movements of 1989-91. Its post-Soviet practice is by no means limited to Ukraine – Russia and most other former Soviet republics have embraced the method with equal if not greater enthusiasm. (People Power Peaks...2011:no page, emphasis added). 1791
Police shot [Afro-American] Mr. Thomas while trying to escape capture .Residents in an adjacent apartment complex witnessed the shooting, and the word soon spread. Anger grew about this latest shooting of an unarmed suspect. -...-Mr. Thomas was cited 20 times in three months. Multiple charges of driving without a drivers license and seat belt violations were filed against Mr. Thomas and allowed to accumulate into 14 open warrants. -...- the crowd attending the April 9, 2001 City Council meeting, spilled into the streets turning into civil unrest [Cincinnati Riots, 2001]. The people that looted and damaged their own neighborhood in the name of a person they had probably never met used this tragedy to line their pockets at the city's expense and reputation. The riot became a "Theft Olympics" and a "Criminal Convention" exploited by opportunists. -...-The actions of less than one thousand individuals plunged Cincinnati's other 330,000 residents into an apartheid-like curfew, criminalizing the right to go work or socialize . For four days the police had the right to stop people and question their motives and right to travel based upon the "riot” atmosphere in the city. Looters just need an excuse to rob and steal. They were stealing before the unrest stared, and after it cooled down they would steal again; just not as boldly. The death of one or more persons by the police will not turn innocent citizens into 'Robin Hood' style outlaws. The national Black leaders arrived in town, some to actually help the situation, others to “pimp" the moment. The " fringe crazies" arrived. Some came to participate while others were trying to make a name for themselves. (Davis 2001:1-4). In 2014, the same screenplay seems to unfold in Ukraine once again: a shower of sacred blood rains all over...once more. This time the code-word is no longer an elusive “orange thirst” for freedom, but an equally vague “European choice”. The thing is just a “maguffin” (=empty object of desire), a volatile object or quality of little or no ultimate value, in whose acquisition so much effort is put, just as Chrysler's “Corinthian leather” of the 1970-80s.
Livy explains thus what happened when Romulus proposed to neighboring communities to send women to wed to his subjects:
1792
More often than not his envoys were dismissed with the question of whether Rome had thrown open her doors to female, as well as to male, runaways and vagabonds, as that would evidently be the most suitable way for Romans to get wives. (Livy 1960:33-51). Much like Wertz2271 claims, literature is an immemorial societal tool to come to grips with -and hopefully soothe or resolve – social conflicts through “morality plays” that allow symbolic retribution, (partial) reversal of roles and so forth:
The riddle's relationship to group ideology is therefore somewhat unique among traditional genres, in that it creates a play world in which forbidden beliefs and practices can be safely explored. In this sense it defines group boundaries negatively, in terms of what a group does not believe. (Thatcher 1996:170). Liminality involves an equalizing (or even an inversion) of status, a blurring of distinctions. One of the trickster’s duties is to lower or invert status and to induce marginality. Margins refer to positions at or near boundaries. (Hansen 2001:306). Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people. While carnival lasts, there is no other life outside it. During carnival time life is subject only to its laws, that is, the laws of its own freedom. -...- The hierarchical background and the extreme corporative and caste divisions of the medieval social order were exceptionally strong. Therefore such free, familiar contacts were deeply felt and formed an essential element of the carnival spirit. People were, so to speak, reborn for new, purely human relations. These truly human relations were not only a fruit of imagination or abstract thought; they were experienced. The utopian ideal and the realistic merged in this carnival experience, unique of its kind (Bakhtin 1984:7,10). Starting with ancient mystery religions 2272, the purpose of most religions 2271 2272
1969. Experts argue that mystery religions – such as Mithras'- often transgressed caste or social boundaries in the pursuit of higher unity by welcoming then outcast or liminal groups such as slaves and women, which were rubbing elbows on equal footing as initiates with members of other social classes.
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is in fact -paying homage to class struggle as a recruiting strategy- to act as theoretical equalizers, taking the garb up of universal religions whereby ancient gods -such as Mithras or Isis- absorb new powers, and spread all across the Mediterranean world, at first Hellenistic, and later Roman.
During the times of the struggle for, and path after Indian independence, the collective grievances of the untouchables were apparently so ignored that leader Ambedkar -and a mass of followers- converted to Buddhism in 1956 in order to escape the caste system.
Earlier on, the same had likely happened with Islam (=conversion in order to escape the caste system). People had equally converted en masse to Catholicism in the Portuguese colonies in India (about 1/3 of Goa's population is still Catholic): a conversion that allowed to escape the caste system. In China under the Eastern Jin State (317-420 CE), commoners joined the growing Buddhist monastic community in order to avoid forced labor and harsh taxation in a war-torn State.
Later still, hobos, proletarians -and other social outcasts not necessarily dejected2273 such as segments among Jews, bourgeois and intellectuals- would embrace Marxist doctrines, or another secular religion that allowed for instant social mobility under the socio-economic quake it produced in some countries.
Early Buddhist psychology had charted the dynamic millennia before 2273
In an interview, Chilean Fascist intellectual Serrano acknowledged the public regarded him as a sort of lunatic novelty of no import.
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talented XIX century wisenheimers and their secularized talmuds:
Therefore, hatred character canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fulfill his/her social services or duties introduced by the culture. The failure of fulfilling social norms and duties bring him ill fame in the social context. Finally hatred character trends to hate the society where he/she lives -...-The person whom led by hatred is unable to understand good and bad. This mental distortion, brought by hatred, causes further to bring about various self annihilation tendencies such as selfblame, self-punishment, being too hard on oneself, and heavy guilty feelings. ( Priyadarshana, ME6210 no date:chapter 7:3). Much as so-called sinners and bottom-feeders could herald the new age of a new religion, so affluent bourgeois and bohemian intellectuals could herald the new age of new socio-economic paradigms without any sense of inconsistency, irony or ridicule.
In the Belle Epoque China torn between the clutches of foreign imperialism, inadequate or sabotaged Imperial reforms and underdevelopment, many Chinese found convenient to convert to Christianity in order to both court favors from influential foreigners, and to escape from traditional hierarchy and collective responsibilities.
The invisible hand of Christian missionaries is seen behind Chinese insurrectionist leader Hong Xiuquan (Taiping Rebellion, 1850-64), who believed to be Jesus' brother, and who wanted to overthrow the corrupt/inept bureaucracies (=Hong had failed several times the imperial exam to enter the State apparatus) and false religions (Confucianism/Buddhism) to bring about a heavenly kingdom in Taiping based upon Christian doctrines, which he would later head as â&#x20AC;&#x153;heavenly 1795
Kingâ&#x20AC;?. Taiping insurrectionists allegedly failed to gain assistance from European powers: 20 million people died during the turmoil according to T.H. Reilly 2274.
It is not surprising that such [traditional Chinese folk] gods could hardly be conceived in strong opposition to the state, and hence rebellions with a religious dimension usually drew symbols from foreign religions such as Buddhism and Christianity as, for instance, in the Taiping rebellion in the nineteenth century (Bohr, 1985). As Wolf noted, â&#x20AC;&#x153;the native gods were so much a part of the establishment that they could not be turned against itâ&#x20AC;? (Wolf, 1974: 145). (Lang 1995:41). the Taiping Rebellion, was the bloodiest civil war in history. Between 1850 and 1864, more than 600 Chinese cities were destroyed. The death toll was at least 20 million people, rising to 100 million factoring in the floods and famines caused by fighting. -...-Hong and many of his followers were a cultural and linguistic minority known as the Hakka. -...- The wandering ways of the Hakka engendered suspicions among their neighbors. The Hakka were also distinguished by their occupations: migratory jobs like mining, forestry, and tea portage. Hakka women were equally mobile and stood out from Han women because they did not bind their feet. (Wilson 2017:213-214). The Emperor and the peasant; the upper class litterateur and the illiterate hobo; residents of shanty towns and posh gated communities alike, all come together as one through the prism of religion and consequent membership in artificial kin groups:
The moments of racial, class and gender reversal in these folkloric [Francoist] musicals should not blind one to their conservative plots. But their self-conscious staginess at least makes the viewer aware that the fantasies of miscegenation being enacted on screen are just that: fantasies.(Labanyi in Brah&Coombes 2000:68). The 'last and meek' of the Christian imagery, the 'proletarians and 2274
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, 2004.
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dispossessed' of the 'scientific Socialism', the 'Aryans' of the NSDAP mythology scheming coteries robbed of their heritage/due/plus-value etc will one day turn tables on their oppressors.
In Lucian's (II century CE) Voyage To The Lower World , Micyllus the humble deceased cobbler concludes:”All is peace. The tables are turned: the laugh is with us poor men; it is the rich that make moan, and are ill at ease.”2275. Nietzsche identifies in this obsession a salient trait of Christianity:
Belief in what? Love for what? Hope for what? There’s no doubt that these weak people at some time or another also want to be the strong people, some day their “kingdom” is supposed to arrive—they call it simply “the kingdom of God,” as I mentioned. People are indeed so humble about everything! (Nietzsche 1887:15). Famously impatient with even pro-Bigfoot academics, Sasquatch pioneer René Dahinden imagined a moment of comeuppance for ivory tower scoffers. “I’d take the scientists by the scruff of their collective necks and rub their goddamn faces in—actually, I would like to see all the people—the scientists—who have opened their mouths and made their stupid, ignorant statements, fired from their jobs,” Dahinden felt. “They should totally, absolutely, right then and there, without pension, without anything, just be taken and thrown out the front door. Then and there.” If the dream of the discovery of a cryptid should one day be realized, Buhs explained, “those who had always known the truth, those who had come to the right conclusion by the dint of hard work and the application of skill, would receive the dignity that the world had otherwise denied them.” (Loxton&Prothero 2013:ch.7). [god said:]I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh; they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine. Then all mankind will know that I, the LORD, am your Savior, your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob. (Isaiah 49:26).
2275
Lucian 1905:215.
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Micyllus resurfaces as Lazarus in the gospel parable ( Luke 16:19-31) according to Hock:
The second question asked what sources can be used to clarify the Mentalitat, the social and intellectual conventions, which the parable assumes of its readers and hearers. It should now be clear that a variety of rhetorical, literary, and philosophical sources from the Greco-Roman world provided detailed and insightful clues to those conventions. In particular, Cynic sources, such as Lucian's Gallus and Cataplus, proved especially helpful. In any case, these extrabiblical sources are very different from those usually cited in discussions of the parable. -...- By seeing the parable as arising out of a traditional culture (rather than only a Jewish or Oriental one) I can include the whole of the Greco-Roman world. This distinction is clearly justified in terms of social roles and experience, for Lazarus and Micyllus inhabited very much the same social world, albeit at its margins among the poor townspeople. (1987:463). Kuhn says quite starkly that we can now state, with little chance of refutation, that the Gospel â&#x20AC;&#x153;lifeâ&#x20AC;? of Jesus had already been written, in substance, at least five thousand years before he came. An Egyptian Jesus had raised an Egyptian Lazarus from the dead at an Egyptian Bethany, with an Egyptian Mary and Martha present, in the scripts of that ancient land at least five thousand years b.c.e (Harpur 2005:80). As Koester2276 suggests, apocalyptic images of role reversal, retribution, healing and triumph in African-American music were ambiguous insofar they might be interpreted as relating to this world or the next. Liberation theology in Latin America shows religious images can indeed be a double-edged sword. They may work as opium to pacify the masses in waiting for glory in the afterlife; or as ether to enthuse them to set things straight here and now. Before coming to indicate socialcommunism in polite society, progressivism was the equation between social progress and a foundation for religious truth. 2276
2011:Revelation In African-American Culture.
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The method really 'works' in every circumstance. In the tragedy, Oedipus vanishes at his death, not without sharing some mysterious secret with Theseus first:
Thomas said to him, "Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like.". Jesus said, "I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out." And [Jesus] took him and withdrew and told him three things. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?" Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me; a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up." ( Gospel Of Thomas no date no page n.13). One of the many songs in the low-cost merchandising landslide related to a Japanese cartoon introduced in France with great success in 1978 appropriates such motif. The song (Goldorak Et L'Enfant, 1979) relates how a child going for a walk with his dog “along the seashore” spots the superhero aboard his luminous giant robot who's coming home after the battle
and waves to him. Without
hesitation, the 'hero/savior of arrivals' forgets his fatigue and promptly lands to meet with and to “reveal a secret” to the child.
What secret could Daisuke Fleed (the hero's name in the original Japanese version) possibly share with the child he has chosen for that purpose? Perhaps one regarding his father's kingdom? “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. ” (Matthew 11:27). 1799
Why not? After all, in the cartoon Daisuke is Duke Fleed, the heir to the throne of a faraway paradise planet he had to leave behind in his giant UFO-robot when the overpowering forces of a coalition of hostile aliens destroyed it in a nuclear mayhem.
The song begins with the telling words:” I know this young boy who met him one evening and that didn't happen in a song, nor in a story” 2277. The song (Jet
Robot, 1980) tied to the Italian adaptation of another Japanese cartoon ( Getter Robo G, 1975) could be part of the Catholic credo as it recites:
• tre amici e un corpo solo (three friends yet only one body);
• E' uno e siamo in tre (it's one yet there's three of us here);
• In un perfetto accordo noi ritorniamo in tre. Ma si può ripetere il miracolo (in perfect harmony there's three of us here again; the miracle can happen once again, though).
Encapsulated in a low-budget song tied to the mass-marketing of a Japanese cartoon targeting elementary schoolchildren readers may find an entire galaxy of myths no less (or no more) credible than when they're applied elsewhere. 1977 Japanese animated series I-Zenborg featured some sort of La Fontaine situation, psychological complex and the like in almost each of the 39 episodes: fall,
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“For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” (2 Peter 1:16).
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comeback and redemption; assuming one's actions; telling the truth and being disbelieved; father-son complexes etc. In almost every episode, the plot revolved around some sort of “gotcha” moment that clearly mirrors the arti manthano of ancient myth.
The vegetarian Pythagoreans as well cultivated secret knowledge passed on through chains of initiates. Jimmy Guieu, David Icke, Jordan Maxwell and their lot also often secretively and ambiguously hinted at secrets that more or less omnipotent authority figures (aliens, high-ranking insiders 2278, 'Men In Black', powerful rabbis...) had shared with them.
Renaissance Madonnas have appeared all over the place through time to a diverse bunch of liminal figures (shepherds, outcasts...) also in order to “share”, “entrust” or “reveal” secrets. Uninhibited writers and offhand scientists offer to “reveal the secret” behind the Hebrew Torah; Dante's or Da Vinci's work, and so forth. The role “secrets”, cliques, 'secret handshakes', and best of friends play in the development of children is obvious. Fringe radical groups promise to reveal countercultural truth that will warrant the rewriting of history books at once.
Elated hucksters promise to share secrets to make one look much younger, wealthier, and so forth:
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Guieu interviews esoteric writer Jean-Louis Victor, who claims he got one of Pope Paul VI's lawyers (no less) to admit the Church had purposefully redacted doctrines in early times to remove the notion of reincarnation from the canon in order to exert better control over the masses in league with secular authorities.(Guieu 1991ss: Les Vies Antérieures).
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In the beginning, subtle, informative print ads were used in place of prime-time television advertising, based on the feeling that the product should be "discovered" by women, not "sold" to them. (Mark&Pearson 2001:267). A cursory analysis of the however thin plots of classic Hanna&Barbera cartoons reveals much the same recurring image banks: Amazon queen of faraway planet wants to turn Superman and his (super)friends into stone; Wonder Woman sees the light as the clay statue an Amazon queen sculpted, then is fated to...go to the USA to help win WWII (so much for the political spin); Dino boy and Ugh go through an ordeal to escort someone safely home, and so do the Herculoids. As Hindu god Hanuman had to speedily find a rare antidote to cure divine Lakhsman in danger of imminent death, so did Dino boy and the Herculoids.
Can readers count the motifs listed in this succinct presentation? Is it also possible to add that -in the Japanese cartoon- Daisuke Fleed's betrothed is no other than the daughter of the hostile King who would then attack and destroy the paradise planet: Romeo and Juliet go to outer space.
Is it possible to suggest the cartoonist hinted at something elementary schoolchildren were in no position to know or to fully grasp? Hardly. It is however possible to suggest the cartoonist was deliberately pushing human mind's mysterious buttons.
As well, the idea of the arch-transgressor acting as a double of the archhero/savior is not uncommon: the 'bastard' -whose paternity is either unknown or
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disputed- rejoins as arch-outcast of the ancient world the arch-hero/savior, whose paternity is equally shrouded in mystery because he's allegedly the son of this quintessential spirit; or the incarnation of that almighty god.
Representativeness heuristics – a typical human bias- ignores that there are huge numbers of 'bastards', but no son of any god is unanimously recognized; even if he were unanimously recognized, it'd just count as one case, yet that is what the psychotic mind is in search of:”When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. ”. The same goes for 'hot hand effect' of any kind (“I feel this is my lucky hand” etc):
Players will check those scoreboards to look for patterns, and they will stay at the table and change their bets accordingly. It doesn’t matter what they bet; the house advantage is the same regardless. So, why does the casino provide those scoreboards? To keep players at the table. The casino just wants them to see patterns and keep betting. -...-However, this nonrandom “hothand effect” does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. Research has shown that the probability of making a shot does not change, regardless of whether the previous shot was made or missed. In other words, the sequences of made and missed shots are essentially random. (Huettel 2014:90-2). It is difficult not to think of the explanations given by early psychoanalysts. While psychoanalysis' jargon and theoretical apparatus may be inadequate, ideological, and open to critique, it certainly offers suggestions that it is difficult to resist in at least some instances.
History at times vindicates myth: William the Bastard indeed becomes William the Conqueror; John Lackland -thus named as youngest of five sons1803
becomes King of England. Issued from small Spanish gentry, Pizarro was illiterate, and had shepherded pigs in his youth: he conquered the mighty Inca Empire and its fabulous wealth with only a few dozens ill-equipped soldiers.
Another illegitimate child shall conquer a country: Fidel Castro... De Valera, the icon of the Irish independence movement, was born in New York to a Cuban father; Hitler was born in Austria, yet became the messiah of German nationalism. Just as myth(ologie)s predict, the outsider saves the day.
Yet an(other) illegitimate child (at times labeled as son of either an unwed teenager, a prostitute or a floozy ) makes headlines as fringe pop-culture figure -in association with the Beach Boys-; as self-proclaimed messiah and murderous cult leader as well: Charles Manson. Prinstein 2279 connects involvement with oral sex practices among teenagers with popularity.
Manson -who was rumored to have performed miracles such as levitating a bus over a desert crag- wanted to launch judgment day in the form of a racial war, in perfect keeping with the fads of the 'swinging sixties'.
In 2015, White sociopath Dylan Roof goes on a shooting spree inside an Afro-American church in Charleston (USA) killing nine attending Blacks. Roof -just like Manson- hoped to kindle a full-scale race war:
A number of twentieth century musicians including Kurt 2279
2017.
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Cobain, Phil Spector, Ozzy Osbourne and Axl Rose have been suspected of having bipolar disorder, according to various news reports. Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys probably has schizoaffective disorder, bipolar subtype. It has been reported that Wilson was tormented by auditory hallucinations for decades (Friedman 2009). (Polimeni 2012:91). the prison diary kept by the Provisional IRA leader Bobby Sands before he died on the sixty-sixth day of the hunger strike he had organized and led among the Republican prisoners in the Long Kesh (Maze) prison in County Down, Northern Ireland, in 1981. -...-Sands’s act also seemed born of the same conviction that had led Patrick Pearse to confidently insist that even if the Easter Rising ended in failure, and he himself was killed by the British (he was), his and his comrades’ deaths would be a “blood sacrifice” that would stir the whole Irish people and lead to their rising up and finally seizing their independence. (Rieff 2016:54). The [ Belle Epoque] bombers wanted the lurid newspaper coverage that followed dynamite outrages, on the basis that readers (or a percentage of them) would be attracted to the cause. It’s scarcely surprising, then, that some of their recruits were ignorant of (or indifferent to) the texts of anarchist theory but instead embraced the caricature of anarchist bomber presented to them by a hostile press. -...-When skyjacking dominated the papers, there was a certain inevitability about a percentage of lost or damaged individuals declaring themselves skyjackers. Now, with the media fixated on Islam, we’re seeing a comparable tendency for loners and misfits to embrace jihad, not because they’ve studied the theology of Sayyid Qutb or received training in Afghanistan, but because the rhetoric of holy war offers certainty – and waving a black flag gets them noticed. -...-“When compared with the suppression of anarchy,” explained US President Theodore Roosevelt as late as 1908, “every other question sinks into insignificance.”. In reality, the death toll from anarchist violence was far, far less than the press coverage suggested. Bob James argues that anarchists and anarchist sympathisers initiated perhaps 40 violent attacks between 1880 and 1902, and were to blame for 100 deaths throughout the entire world. (Sparrow 2015:no page). Not only is the 'bastard' a liminal figure on account of his undisclosed parentage, but he most often appears also as an outsider, another liminal, reviled 1805
category that in ancient Greece included all non-kin members (typically outside one's city, tribe, Greek culture...): the opposition between philoi (kin members) and
xenoi (outsiders).
Nineteenth-century folklorist Emily Gerard, whose essay on “Transylvanian Superstitions” influenced Stoker’s novel, noted that Romanian stories had long connected the “nosferatu” to problematic births. The creature is said to emerge as the “illegitimate offspring of two illegitimate persons,” a description repeated by folklorist Heinrich von Wlislocki, who adds that the multiply illegitimate “nosferatu” is also “still-born.”In turn, von Wlislocki continues, the vampire troubles normative sex and procreation (Smith 2011:40). Again, the hero comes from afar in order to typically save the day:
Footloose; No Retreat No Surrender; Karate Kid; Bloodsport – in whose case the emphasis is put on the racial divide of a White man defending a Japanese clan's honor-; 1996 Independence Day -in which Jews and Africans united save the world from an alien invasion-.
In Italy in the 1950-70s a film genre called musicarello served as a readypackaged, commodious vehicle to promote a particular singer (or song). Offhand, youth-themed plot contrivances often required the crooning beau to have foreign connections, for example being an Italo-American or an expatriate.
Countless other movies present situations lifted almost verbatim from tragedies of old: Hercules, Perseus, Oedipus and Theseus are outsiders of disputed or mysterious parentage who come from afar. Jesus -another hero of mysterious parentage- reappears at about 30 years of age -after being sighted last as a boy - to 1806
deliver humankind from sin.
Parents are not to be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their parents; each will die for their own sin. (Deuteronomy 24:16). Instead, everyone will die for their own sin; whoever eats sour grapes--their own teeth will be set on edge. (Jeremiah 31:30). Christian apologist St. Justin Martyr (100-165 CE) wrote:
And if we assert that the Word of God was born of God in a peculiar manner, different from ordinary generation, let this, as said above, be no extraordinary thing to you, who say that Mercury is the angelic word of God. But if any one objects that He was crucified, in this also He is on a par with those reputed sons of Jupiter of yours, who suffered as we have now enumerated. -...-And if we even affirm that [Jesus] was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you accept of Perseus. And in that we say that He made whole the lame, the paralytic, and those born blind, we seem to say what is very similar to the deeds said to have been done by Æsculapius. (First Apology, ch.22) . They ultimately save the day, thus showing that the arch-outcast,
doppelgaenger ( of the savior, hero and kin member ) is the best among us all. Unlike what the weavers of improbable, highfalutin genealogies may want one to believe, exopraxis has always been rampant even in bygone ages.
The
(psychopathic) hero, the thrown-away of mythology resembles
Arendt's “superfluous man” she located in Victorian South Africa:
From now on, the mob, begotten by the monstrous accumulation of capital, accompanied its begetter on those voyages of discovery where nothing was discovered but new possibilities for investment. The owners of superfluous wealth were the only men who could 1807
use the superfluous men who came from the four corners of the earth. Together they established the first paradise of parasites whose lifeblood was gold. Imperialism, the product of superfluous money and superfluous men, began its startling career by producing the most superfluous and unreal goods. -...-The superfluous men, "the Bohemians of the four continents" who came rushing down to the Cape, still had much in common with the old adventurers. -...-they had not stepped out of society but had been spat out by it; that they were not enterprising beyond the permitted limits of civilization but simply victims without use or function.(1976:151,189). This clearly shows that Christianity did not invent anything of any import by taking the scum of the Earth on a grand parade down history's central avenue on a backdrop represented by humankind's miserable shortcomings, melodramatic conundrums and tragicomic antics. This also shows how Nietzsche – a philologist and expert in the classics- and his ilk might have had an incomplete perspective when they contrasted ancient culture and Christianity as antithetical.
This is not to deny that Christianity took a segment of the GraecoRoman ideological gamut to unprecedented highs (or lows), much as other regimes did with other segments (NSDAP and the fixation with bloodlines; Khmer Rouge and the fixation with rusticity: enforced agricultural toil went on from 3 am to 11 pm). “An order twice inverted is an order restored, perhaps even strengthened as a result of the exercise”:
The LORD will go forth like a warrior -...-"I will lay waste the mountains and hills And wither all their vegetation; I will make the rivers into coastlands And dry up the ponds” (Isaiah 42:13-5). I smote you with scorching wind and mildew; And the caterpillar was devouring Your many gardens and vineyards, fig trees and olive trees; Yet you have not returned to Me," declares the LORD. 1808
"I sent a plague among you after the manner of Egypt; I slew your young men by the sword along with your captured horses, And I made the stench of your camp rise up in your nostrils; Yet you have not returned to Me," declares the LORD. (Amos 4:9-10). And I [=god] will bring the sword on you to avenge the breaking of the covenant. When you withdraw into your cities, I will send a plague among you, and you will be given into enemy hands. (Leviticus 26:25). In the end of both Christian and Graeco-Roman narratives, the archoutcast reveals his superhuman nature: a divine and/or royal parentage, outstanding feats, sublime insight...The deck of human cards still has a top and a bottom; cards just have been shuffled, but hierarchy is preserved and even strengthened.
Campbell2280 gives an interesting explanation in his discussion over schizophrenia and myth, whose imagery overlaps. He claims that -akin to his mythological proxies- the schizophrenic patient experiences:
a sense of split -...- he sees himself in two roles -...- the role of the clown, that's the outer role that he plays -...- inside he's the savior and he knows it -...- an experience -...- of terrific drop-off and regression backwards, [then] -...- feelings of new knowledge -...- then there comes a sense of a terrific task and danger to be master, also of divine presences that will help one and -...- the final crisis. What differentiates a sociopath who lives off the labors of others from one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or from one who is a contemporary robber baron-or what makes the difference between an ordinary bully and a sociopathic murderer-is nothing more than social status, drive, intellect, blood lust, or simple opportunity. What distinguishes all of these people from the rest of us is an utterly empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the most evolved of all humanizing functions. (Stout 2005:10).
2280
1970.
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At Lecco (Italy)2281, an Albanian mother, recently separated2282, hunts down2283 and stabs2284 her three daughters to death, only to lie their bodies on a bed in order to keep watch over them 2285 before attempting suicide2286, and alerting a neighbor2287. She allegedly attempts suicide again in prison some time later. The shtick works like a charm: she is acquitted, and discarded to a psychiatric facility for ten years as mentally ill2288.
At Pioltello (Italy, May 5, 2014), a 81yo man kills his disabled wife with a hammer, keeps watch over her dead body for 2 days, then attempts suicide. On April 27, 2014 at Pescara (Italy), a man gives a big bear-hug to his 5yo daughter as he sets himself on fire inside his car while his ex-wife looks on: both die. Images of myth spontaneously rise from minds psychotic crack-ups distort. News report that psychologists have been commissioned to investigate the frail little creature's motives.
In the contemporary world of social decomposition 2289 (alteration, Il Messaggero, March 9, 2014. Another wrathful matron like Medea, Procne etc, who resolves to murder her own children to avenge wrongs at at an impious husband's hands. This Albanian woman's husband had run away with another woman. A very similar case was on the Italian press just days earlier: “Due to the inferiority personalities, some wives do not express their hostility or antagonism towards their husband, but to their innocent child. And on the other hand, the Sambulajātaka emphasizes the psychosomatic effect of this sapathuirosha” (Priyadarshana, ME6210 no date:chapter 5:5). 2283 The tearing apart element: a perversion of the hero's journey. 2284 The piercing element. 2285 The contemplation of the hero's body element. 2286 The parading of one's suffering. 2287 Calling the horde to rescue. R.L. Moore (1989:part 2) comments:”it takes the community to do an exorcism. You can't have a private exorcism”. 2288 TgCom24, May 19, 2015. 2289 Divorces can have catastrophic human and economic consequences. If women have progressively gained much in matters of family laws, alimony etc, divorced men are slowly but surely slipping into insolvency as a result of divorce. In Italy, many parties have proposed building shelters not for women, but for divorced men driven 2281 2282
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evolution...) and -to name a few- high rates of divorce 2290; vertical polygamy2291 (= siring offspring with more than one mate, as in the cycles of divorce and remarriage); single parenthood; pandemic extramarital affairs coupled with the “new shame” of not leaving an unfaithful partner when doxed according to therapist Perel:”Perhaps this is why so few affairs last after the marriage that inspired them dissolves. The true test of love in an affair begins only when the obstacle is removed.”2292.
Perel2293 also claims women who contemplate working on a relationship in spite of extramarital affairs are strongly pressured (online, for example) to hire a lawyer and leave: society always finds ways to make lemonade out of lemons. Perel also claims that -as far as cheating is concerned- the “gender gap is closing”, and -depending on the definition of infidelity and of the level of sexual involvement women cheat more often than men.
into insolvency. One source describes the situation in Italy thus:”170.000 couples get divorced every year, with a 2% annual increase -...- separated fathers number 2,2 million. A whopping 800.000 live under the threshold of poverty, whereas 250.000 -or 9%- live with under euro 300 a month”. The same source profiles such unfortunate divorcees thus, citing a report a group of lawyers issued: mostly white collars and other formerly affluent middle-class professionals. (Padri Separati...2011: no page). In 2017, an Italian high court makes history: alimony ex-husbands are liable to pay shall no longer reflect the ex-wife's “standard of living” during the marriage (ANSA, May 10, 2017). 2290 “The average couple marrying for the first time now [in the U.S] has a lifetime probability of divorce or separation somewhere between 40 and 50 percent ” When Marriage...2010:71. Divorce rates vary considerably according to different sources. Ben-Shahar (2005-6:lecture 18) repeatedly mentions a rate of 67%. It is safe to estimate an overall rate around at least 50%. To that, a percentage of separations (not considered divorces by a legal or administrative standpoint) should be added, typically 10%. If divorce rates are no longer rising ( “steep increase in the percentage of all adults who are currently divorced -...-[the percentage in] 1960, quadrupled by the year 2000 “ When Marriage...2010:71), it is because fewer people are getting married to start with. 2291 Naturally, the term polygamy can be wishfully ethicized, excised or rephrased. The final outcome, however, is not going to change: siring offspring with different mates over a span of time. 2292 Perel 2006:188. 2293 2017:part 4.
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Out-of-wedlock births -nearly 40% of babies in the USA in 2007 were delivered to unwed mothers according to some sources 2294- mean the scandal factor lost most of its impact:
Research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown that one in five Americans was sexually molested as a child; one in four was beaten by a parent to the point of a mark being left on their body; and one in three couples engages in physical violence. A quarter of us grew up with alcoholic relatives, and one out of eight witnessed their mother being beaten or hit (Van Der Kolk 2014:10). ANSA (November 28, 2013) reports a new law in Italy puts on equal footing all children, whether legitimate or natural, included those born from incestuous relationships. Children that survive go on to meet a grim fate, as a 2010 study (Merikangas et alii) shows:”These findings provide the first prevalence data on a broad range of mental disorders in a nationally representative sample of U.S. adolescents. Approximately one in every four to five youth in the U.S. meets criteria for a mental disorder with severe impairment across their lifetime ” 2295.
The figure of the semi-retarded hero under the guise of Rocky Balboa, Forrest Gump, and their lot replaced the scandal factor, perhaps; if the 'bastard' could be the greatest of heroes, so can the mentally challenged. “The social hero“Nearly 40 percent of babies born in the United States in 2007 were delivered by unwed mothers, according to data released last month by the National Center for Health Statistics. The 1.7 million out-of-wedlock births, of 4.3 million total births, marked a more than 25 percent jump from five years before. Statistics such as these, which include for the second year in a row a bump in teen pregnancies, after a 14-year decline, leave Sarah Brown concerned. She worries about the children born to unwed parents -- about the disadvantages they often face, including increased likelihood of poverty and greater high school dropout rates.” (Ravitz 2009: no page).”In Cook County –which Chicago belongs to – 79 percent of blacks were born to single mothers in 2003, while only 15 percent of whites were born to single mothers. ” (Bandler 2016:no page). 2295 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20855043. 2294
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system into which we are born” recurs endlessly. What about the physically challenged, another form of “wounded healer” archetype?
During his 12 years in the White House, Franklin D. Roosevelt was hardly ever photographed in a wheelchair. Not surprisingly, the longest-serving president in American history disliked drawing attention to his polio symptoms. -...-Once Roosevelt took the governor’s office in Albany, four years later, the press corps was discouraged from photographing him being helped out of cars or otherwise exhibiting signs of physical dependence. When Life published a photo of him in a wheelchair in 1937, presidential press secretary Steve Early was displeased. (Clausen 2005:no page). Some
root
the
problem
in
the
contemporary
evolution
of
cohabitation2296. The 1960-70s proved to be an unending Mardi Gras built upon wartime propaganda's premises. All sorts of barratrous minorities and hyphenated groups marched to the tune of radical cultural pluralism to pillory and tear apart a series of ...isms. In the U.S, entertainment in the 1970s marked the induction of Afro-Americans (blaxploitation) and Italo-Americans into the American dream mainstream.
Counterculture and its doppelgaenger consumerism flourished under the fig leaf preposterous spiritual or political doctrines supplied. Capitalism never withered, but gorged on the psychotic appetites and neurotic compulsions to buy surreptitiously foisted on dull masses, frisky hippies, deprived minorities etc.
Armies of barratrous counselors, lawyers, psychologists and the like 2296
Not only are common-law relationships increasingly common percentage-wise (=living together without being officially married), but they are striving towards a legal status of equality with marriage in several jurisdictions:”In 2009, 6.7 million unwed [U.S] couples lived together, up 13% from 2008. By 2013, more than eight million couples were living together before or instead of marriage ” (Welch 2015b:125).
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marched on to facilitate the byzantine process of unending strife and litigation. While this may look bad, the opposite might always chance to apply. Dues 2297 elatedly celebrates the unending progress in conflict management in recent decades.
Dues' emphasis is not on forces occultes and the culture of litigation and irresponsibility they foster, but on the solutions society provides for such strife:
Meet today's new divorced woman. She is tough, aggressive and armed to the teeth with ammunition on how to get what she wants in divorce court. It all comes courtesy of a profusion of new books, videos and workshops geared to teaching women how to go for the jugular when their marriage breaks up. -...-.Other writers contributing to this new genre are even more aggressive, such as lawyers Sharyn Sooho and Steven Fuchs, author of Tao of Divorce: A Woman's Guide to Winning, which they published on the Internet. The book integrates Eastern philosophy with divorce, and urges women to adopt such strategies as "enemy reconnaissance, strategic information, covert planning, and the element of surprise" to get what they want in court. -...-Kansas lawyer Bradley A. Pistotnik -...- recommends -...- "control your husband by being alternately loving and indifferent to keep him in a state of continual concern" and "hire a detective to prove your husband has a bad character, and pay for the services with your husband's money.â&#x20AC;? (Matchan 1998:no page). Unsatisfying marriage is, by far, the most frequent cause of human misery.(Glasser 1998:135). the sense that something basic about human integrity and respect is being violated. Somehow, the underlying truth about human nature has become painfully distorted. (Brown 1998:199)2298. From the mid-1990s onwards, however, massive social intervention programs -for example PRWORA and TANF under Clinton and later Bush, jr. since
2297 2298
2010:Conflict Management. Branden offers much the same idea as he speaks of â&#x20AC;&#x153;human dignityâ&#x20AC;? in people.
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1996- were launched to foster the values of marriage and relationships as part of welfare interventions: horses may already be way out of the barn, though.
Social ills are everywhere on the rise. Quebec (Canada) local intervention group JEVI (suicide prevention) announces in 2014 a 140% increase over 2009-10 of calls to its hotlines (4498 calls in 2009-10 versus 10799 in 2014); JEVI's concerns find echo in WHO reports.
Gone were the bold days of the 1960-70s when the skyrocketing rates of divorce, barratry and social decomposition only meant a boon to emerging new lobbies: political activists; lawyers; agony aunts; instant book pros; counselors; professionals in the field of psychology; contractors (=more divorces= more houses to rent for example). Former U.S President Carter 2299 has a word in mind to designate lads on college campuses who try all the time to have sex with girls:”rape”. Because the left is a mixed bag, feminist scholar Paglia 2300 urges university administrators to stay flat “out” of what students do or say to one another on the frat house scene.
As a row of formerly liminal groups -homosexuals, divorcees, people of color, illegal immigrants...) marched down history's central avenue, gagging measures and censorship laws (civil rights laws, ...ism censoring laws) were deployed to extract the last ounce of economic or political return.
2299 2300
in Houry&Scully 2017:week 6:Interview With President Jimmy Carter. 2017.
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Regulators preached extended government rule as litigation soared; ancillary professions emerged to help managing the skyrocketing social strife and unease; increasing amounts of money changed hands as a consequence while the nanny State levied a tithe (for example the production and licensing lines associated with new professions in the legal, counseling and psychological field).
In Italy, (illegal) immigration represents a multi-billionaire industry that makes the delight of both Social-Communist and Catholic activists (“professional almost-boat-people”) who hasten to throw to the dissenting mob not only the umpteenth boat-people tragedy, but the distraught figure of the failed schoolteacher (psychologist, cultural mediator, supplier...) as well. S-he is retained for a pittance to teach Italian to immigrants: should we tell them that “the party is over”?
Popular therapist and author Patricia Evans spurs abuse victims to “Tell your abuser that you will video all meetings. Then keep a video camera with you.”2301. In Provincia di Novara (Italy) well-wishing group SOROPTIMIST 2302 plans to make high-tech, miniaturized recording equipment available to women in order to curb domestic violence: women might record abusive behavior directed against them in order to eventually press legal charges for the sake of self-protection.
Society has become a global sit-com where toxic, barratrous relationships dominate. Attendees at John Lee's workshops often laugh nervously or hysterically as he expounds the human condition's existential horrors: human beings as “cursed”. 2301 2302
2012:20. Giornale Di Arona, June 10, 2016:23.
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Mixing equal parts of Buddhist and Freudian psychology, parents very well might have been the wellspring of one's psychological ills. Yet, those parents had parents, too: the ultimate sin of Adam and Eve, the first parents, gets passed onto us all as a metaphor of existential distress.
Baptist pastor, counselor and best-selling author Chapman cautions that verbal abuse cuts deep into children's self-esteem. Such wounds get remembered for a lifetime in spite of verbal abuse and dueling being the blueprint for most hilarious sit-coms:
The pressure cooker that is family (Tannen 2001). [as a child you were] a bellboy for your parents' neurosis (Miles Neale in 2010). From the homicidal bitchin' That goes down in every kitchen To determine who will serve and who will eat (Leonard Cohen, Democracy, 1992). [while married ]I felt trapped in a theatre of the absurd when I wanted desperately to live in a well-made play.(Tannen 1991). In a relationship it is “no holds barred” (Richo 2008:03). It’s common at this early stage [of betrayal] to see your relationship as an emotional death camp, with no chance of pardon or escape. -...-Human beings aren’t constructed to feel one way about anything —least of all love. (Abrahms Spring&Spring 1996:60,63). This is the reason for so much bitterness, shortness of and recrimination in our daily family lives. We get back a reflection from our loved objects that is less than the grandeur and perfection that we need to nourish ourselves. We feel diminished by their human shortcomings. (Becker 1973:167, emphasis added).
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Engagement is evident in the extreme on most TV sitcoms. Often, 90 percent of sitcom and soap opera interaction is judgment and engagement: attack followed by counterattack, rationalize, and absorb. In some comedies, the main form of humor is counterattack. -...-In "real life," engagement is an accepted form of social interaction, very apparent in casual conversation and gossip. Consider how much of superficial conversation consists of complaining or berating yourself (absorbing), explaining or justifying your behavior (rationalizing) ,or criticizing or putting down others (counterattacking). (Brown 1998:111). What is most destructive for a relationship, Gottman found, is hostilityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an attack on the personâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;be it in the form of name-calling, insults, hurtful sarcasm, or other ways of putting the partner down.-...-In essence, what a relationship needs is basic respect and common courtesy. Gottmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s advice to couples, beyond striving to higher levels of respect and acceptance, is that they should accentuate the positive aspects of the relationship. (Ben-Shahar 2011:76). Interestingly, people who do show long-term benefits from marriage are individuals who started out with relatively low levels of happiness. People who were already happy before marriage do not gain much from tying the knot. This may be because people who enjoy high levels of well-being are more likely to have a fulfilling job and a close circle of family and friends, and thus have relatively less to gain from marriage. (Sharot 2011:56). Over the years our research team has repeatedly found that chronic emotional abuse and neglect can be just as devastating as physical abuse and sexual molestation.(Van Der Kolk 2014:74). In most of our minds, satisfying sex and satisfying love go together. But when we get married and make a commitment to each other for life, we have no idea how difficult it will be to keep both sex and love going for anywhere near a lifetime. As the relationship continues and the coercion with which too many of us try to control each other starts to take its toll, the association between sex and love becomes tenuous to nonexistent. It is hard, if not impossible, to love someone who wants to control and change you or someone you want to control and change. Sex usually continues in the marriage, but it now becomes controlling. One or both partners practice external control and no longer finds love in the marriage. And each blames the other for how lonely they both now feel. My guess is that the vast majority of people who engage in sex are not in love with each other, or one 1818
may be in love but the other is not.(Glasser 1998:53). More than anything else, what characterizes an emotionally abusive relationship is a consistent pattern of hurtful, humiliating, and condescending behavior. -...-Verbal assault includes berating, belittling, criticizing, humiliating, name-calling, screaming, threatening, excessive blaming, shaming, using sarcasm in a cutting way, or expressing disgust toward the person. This kind of abuse is extremely damaging to a personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s self-esteem and self-image. Just as assuredly as physical violence assaults the body, verbal abuse assaults the mind and spirit, causing wounds that are extremely difficult to heal. -...-While their relationship [=movie characters] may seem like a caricature, the truth is that it accurately depicts the sort of emotional dueling that occurs between some couples. It is also not that uncommon for partners to take turns at being emotionally abusive to one another.(Engel 2002:16-17,28,49-50). an interrogation about it, or anger about it, or some sarcastic putdown about [one's behavior.]-...-Recovery is all about dissolving the influence of negative comments and demeaning treatment as well as the underlying, and sometimes unrecognized, feelings of inadequacy, unworthiness, and low self-esteem that such treatment generates. -...-After all, you have survived the oppression of verbal abuse. (Evans 2012:17,20). This may explain the recurring boom-and-bust cycles of mail-orderbrides2303 from presently dejected countries (such as Poland or Hungary in the late 1980s; former Soviet Union States -such as Belarus and Ukraine- in the 1990s and 2000s):â&#x20AC;?The Harris Survey found that over a third of Americans who married between 2005 and 2012 met their partners onlineâ&#x20AC;?2304. A ballooning population of (illegal) immigrants -such as Hispanics or Africans- may also want to remedy their lower levels of happiness -let alone issues related to welfare and citizenship- by marrying natives. 2303
Although immigrant communities have for ages engineered the fetching of brides from the old country to their new one, in recent decades such phenomenon concerns long-distance relationships that coalesce either over the internet, or earlier through printed lonely hearts catalogs. 2304 Welch 2015b:88.
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Noted psychologists William and Carleen Glasser 2305 list “the seven deadly habits” that put nails in any relationship's coffin: readers can easily recognize popular sitcoms' blueprint. Such bad habits are:
• criticism;
• blaming;
• complaining;
• nagging;
• threatening;
• punishing;
• bribing.
The only difference being, of course, that judges typically settle disputes in real life at an escalating personal cost for most of the participants: unlike sit-coms, there is nothing 'funny' about it. A poll noted U.S agony aunt and psychologist Joy Browne cited allegedly showed 74% parents would not have chosen to have children in the past if they had known what they knew at the moment of taking the poll. Gallup News (September 25, 2013) begs to disagree:”More than nine in 10 adults say they already have children, are planning to have children, or wish that 2305
2007:47ss.
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they had had children. The 5% of American adults who do not want children is virtually the same as the 4% found in 1990.â&#x20AC;?.
No wonder an increasing number of people shun real-life toxic relationships in favor of chasing fantasies over the internet, where liars lie to themselves; or of carrying their own personal girlfriend in the pocket (the game
LovePlus): always cute, personable and highly interactive thanks to the latest IT. No justice system lies in wait to destroy one's emotional and/or financial well-being in court in case of real or presumed faux-pas.
The use of psychotropics is on the rise in the Western world. The 2011 report about the USA (America's State Of Mind) stated that:
Overall, the number of Americans on medications used to treat psychological and behavioral disorders has substantially increased since 2001; more than oneâ&#x20AC;?inâ&#x20AC;?five adults was on at least one of these medications in 2010, up 22 percent from ten years earlier. Women are far more likely to take a drug to treat a mental health condition than men, with more than a quarter of the adult female population on these drugs in 2010 as compared to 15 percent of men. 1 in 10 [UK] children and young people aged 5 - 16 suffer from a diagnosable mental health disorder (UK advocacy group YoungMinds). Americans today are more debt-ridden, obese, medicated, and addicted than we ever have been. For the first time in history, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced that automobile accidents are now the second leading cause of accidental death in the United States. The leading cause? Drug overdoses. In fact, more people die from prescription drug overdoses than from heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine drug use combined. Even more alarming is the estimate that less than 5 percent of those 1821
who died from prescription drug overdoses obtained their drugs from the folks we normally think of as street-corner drug dealers. The dealers today are more likely to be parents, relatives, friends, and physicians. Clearly thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a problem. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re desperate to feel less or more of somethingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to make something go away or to have more of something else. (Brown 2012:90). In 2008, the most recent year for which complete data are available, it funded $3.6 billion for antipsychotic medications, up from $1.65 billion in 1999. The number of people under the age of twenty receiving Medicaid-funded prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs tripled between 1999 and 2008.(Van Der Kolk 2014:34). Since the 1990s the social costs of such Mardi Gras are becoming apparent as governments on both left and right circularly bemoan:
When I was still giving lectures, I used to ask my audiences on occasion: "Will anyone here who was not brought up in a dysfunctional family please raise your hand ? " Not a hand would be raised. All organizations, whether families or businesses, are dysfunctional. But some are more dysfunctional than others. (Peck 1997:200, emphasis added). A slew of new research during the past few years shows that marital stress can play a significant role in a person's overall health- increasing risk for everything from chronic pain to a heart attack. -...- One study linked marital distress to dangerous thickening of the heart wall, just like smoking. -...- Stress is a major risk factor for many health problems but marital stress appears to be a bigger hazard than other types of stress simply because it's so personal. You can't escape marital stress the way you can other types of stress. Most people think of marriage as a comfort zone and a place where you can relax, but when that is stressed, there is no safe haven.(Joshi 2005:109). Stress is the most debilitating human phenomenon. Every couple has stress, and their medical bills are related to the intensity and the degree and duration of that stress, most of their medical bills (Hendrix 2012:part 1). Some of the resulting studies have shown that the risk of a bad marriage is as strong as other medical risks. -...- the study also showed 1822
that marital stress, long before it's obvious, can have a measurable impact on immune-system health. -...-"Marriage stress is unique because it basically takes what should be your primary source of support and makes it your primary stress," says Professor Janice Kiecolt-Glaser of Ohio State. (Parker-Pope 2004:no page). A recent British study found that almost half of working adults consider the rush hour commute the single most stressful event of the workday, causing commuters to suffer greater anxiety than fighter pilots or riot police. Essentially, rush hour is not so much an effort to be on time as it is a ritual of frustration in which we feel under siegeand we naturally want to hurry past such a negative experience and on to something else-something more pleasant and productive. At rush hour, we are not just rushing to our job or home; we are also trying to rush past the present moment, which reality will not permit. (Carroll 2007:part 3). The opposite findings have already been established, whereby negative character traits and adverse emotions, such as selfinvolvement (Graham, Scherwitz, & Brand, 1989; Scherwitz, Graham, & Ornish, 1985; Scherwitz, Graham, Grandits, Buehler, & Billings, 1986), anger (Ornish et al., 1990), and hostility (Williams, 1989), release a toxic mixture of hormones within the nervous system, including cortisol and adrenocorticotropin, which over time has been found to impinge neural growth (Sapolsky, 2003), decrease cortical volume (Rosenzweig & Bennett, 1996) and correlate highly with heart disease (Ornish et al., 1998; Williams et al., 1999) depression (Teasdale et al., 2000), and death (Lee, Ogle, & Sapolsky, 2002; Sapolsky, 1998, 1999). (Neale 2006:109). Whereas a child born and raised by a single parent is 7 times more likely to live in poverty than a child born and raised by married parents;Whereas a child born to and raised by married parents is 5 times less likely to be dependent on welfare than a child born and raised by a single parent; (U.S. 107 th Congress, 2nd session, res.316 2002:2). The $112 billion figure represents a "lower-bound" or minimum estimate. Given the cautious assumptions used throughout this analysis, we can be confident that current high rates of family fragmentation cost taxpayers at least $112 billion per year. The estimate of $112 billion per year is the total figure incurred at the federal, state, and local levels. Of these [U.S] taxpayer costs, $70.1 billion are at the federal level, $33.3 billion are at the state level, and 1823
$8.5 billion are at the local level. Taxpayers in California incur the highest state and local costs at $4.8 billion, while taxpayers in Wyoming have the lowest state and local costs at $61 million. ( The Taxpayer... 2008:5) Professor Sue Richardson, of the National Institute of Labour Studies at Flinders University, said Australia was re-creating an underclass "of the excluded and the dangerous" not seen since the late 19th century. "Back then, large numbers of men were excluded from secure jobs, never got to be fathers - at least officially - and were a menace to society."extnote. Speaking at the Conference of Economists in Canberra yesterday, she said labour-market changes accounted for the rise of single or divorced men who were poor marriage prospects. They were unemployed or reliant on part-time or casual work. Subsequently, many were forgoing fatherhood. She said 35 per cent of Australian men aged 35 to 44 in 2003 were not married and did not not have a full-time job. This compared with 20 per cent in 1978. Half the men aged 25 to 34 had not done what men in that age group had traditionally done: found a full-time job, married and had children. In 1978, only 30 per cent were not on that path."This is an extraordinary decline," Professor Richardson said in an interview. "Men of prime parenting age who are married and employed full-time are a threatened species." -...- While an "alarming" 18 per cent of children lived in a household with no employed parent, the growth was in sole-mother families, not couple families. Jobless men, it seemed, had chosen to forgo fatherhood.(Horin 2003: no page). More women are having children alone, unable to find men willing to commit to marriage or the cost of setting up a household, a study has found. The proportion of [Australia's] single mothers aged 30 to 34 who fell into this category jumped from 17 per cent of female lone parents in 1986 to 42 per cent in 2001, according to the study, released today. Among younger women aged 25 to 29 who were sole parents, the number was even greater, increasing from 37 per cent to 66 per cent over the same period. The author of the Monash University extnote
It is quite an irony indeed that the institution of the family might represent just a septic tank to discharge all the noxious pulsions and aggression into, which could otherwise result in such pent-up anger being released into the society at large. “Near and dear” ones then serve not as icons of Bronze Age sentimentality, but as one another's lightning rod. Crime columns throughout the Western world seem to anecdotally support this grim appraisal. It is not difficult to get the point. Breivik – a sociopath mentioned elsewhere- killed dozens of young leftists at a youth rally. Cho Seung-Hui shot many students on campus. McVeigh killed dozens of people in his rage against the U.S federal government. The societal cost at large was high:”The trickster represents the deity coming through as the destroyer, the disrupter of programs. ”. If Cho, McVeigh and Breivik had killed a stereotypical family of two children and a wife, the tragedy would have remained an eminently private one (note of this writer).
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research, Dr Bob Birrell, said this group of single women heralded a new social phenomenon. (Milburn 2003: no page). When prime-age men leave the workforce in large numbers, it creates problems both for individual families and for communities [in the USA]. At the most basic level, people who do not work do not earn money. Healthy prime-age men have traditionally been expected to provide for their families and contribute to the community, but jobless men cannot provide even for themselves, putting a strain on family members and on the taxpayer. A recent report from the Brookings Institution simulated several anti-poverty measures â&#x20AC;&#x201D; e.g., raising the high school graduation rate, encouraging marriage, increasing the minimum wage, etc. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and found that large gains in family income would come only from getting household heads back to work. (Richwine 2016:no page). Both BPD [borderline personality disorder] and NPD [narcissistic personality disorder] have a stigma attached to them, but there are many people who suffer from these disorders. In fact, they are considered by many to be the personality disorders of our time. This may be due to the fact that so few of us grew up in a two-parent family, to the fact that more and more single mothers are raising children while at the same time having to earn a living, or to the fact that all forms of child abuse have been increasing over the years. It is generally believed that these personality disorders are caused, or at least exacerbated, by inadequate parenting, parental neglect, abandonment, and/or child abuse.(Engel 2002:186). This is the overall conclusion of research among 2,100 British adults that says women are happy to abandon the workplace but not if it means spending all day at home cooking, cleaning and looking after children. Instead they want to play the "role" of housewife with a little help from, for instance, a nanny, and someone who does the ironing. And unlike Kylie Minogue, they don't want to do any dusting either. The report, by Marian Salzman, chief strategic officer of Euro RSCG Worldwide, the world's fifth largest advertising agency, describes these women as princess-style "domestic divas" who effectively exploit their husbands. (Womack 2004:no page). There again, mythology serves as a salad bar for the mythmaker/storyteller. Let's consider only the narrative of the child, whose important father disappears soon after casually eloping with his mother (akin to mythical 1825
Phaeton2306). The encounter may happen during a routine ( the sun god cruising the sky) or accidental (the King lost in a dense forest; Hanuman in his adventures) journey; physical intercourse is accessory, as god Hanuman sired offspring without it: a common mytheme2307.
The mytheme of the the illustrious -yet unknown- father may -as this writing contends- come together with any other mytheme, such as Pandora box's in the Tongan story of Sisimataila'a 2308, hero on a journey to both discover his father the Sun god, who had impregnated his virgin mother during his sky cruises, and to retrieve two bundles (good and bad) from an old woman in order to marry a princess2309:
Well in myth this motif occurs, time and time again-"Who is my father? Go find your father." This means simply find your manhood. The young man has to break from the mother and find his action, his male action. (Campbell&Boa 1989:71). Eminent -though absent- fathers are most likely to be present. Tannen 2310 resumes her expertise regarding ordinary contemporary families as she says that “many people recall their father as absent; away at work or away at home in a 2306
The same story recurs elsewhere, or the chase after a mythical ancestry and fabulous heritage, for example in the Navaho myth of the Twin War Gods. 2307 “A young Pueblo woman, who was helping her mother mix clay for pottery with her foot, felt a splash of mud on her leg but thought no more of it. "After some days the girl felt something was moving in her belly, but she did not think anything about going to have a baby. She did not tell her mother. But it was growing and growing. One day in the morning she was very sick. In the afternoon she got the baby.” (Campbell 1949:301). 2308 The name means “Sisi of the sun face”. A parellel recurs in Hindu mythology. Karna, the prodigious son of the Sun god, meets Indra in disguise. Indra is the father of Karna's enemy Arjuna: he asks for Karna's armor he was born with (just like Athena emerged fully armored from Zeus's head). Karna acquiesces, but asks for a magic spear in return. Indra (disguised as a Brahmin) also promises Karna he shall look like his father the Sun in both glory and skin color. Gautama Buddha appeared to Chinese Emperor Ming of Han (I century CE) in a dream recorded in the V century: he was as brilliant as the sun, with a golden complexion. 2309 The theme underarching most of these myths is that of rites of passage and life cycles. 2310 2001.
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workshop, garage or study -...- often remembered as silentâ&#x20AC;?.
Mothers -equally eminent and absent- are at times chosen, such as goddesses Aphrodite (mother of Aeneas); Thetis (mother of Achilles); Ganga (Hindu goddess who bore Bhisma2311 of Mahabharata fame to King Santanu); Maya (Gautama Buddha's mother) dies a few days after childbirth.
The rest of the story remains mostly unchanged; the child is fated to reappear only at a later date: Aeneas is raised in his early years by nymphs in Aphrodites' retinue on mount Ida (=the mountain connection again); the godly centaur Chiron raises Achilles on mount Pelion (=the mountain mytheme); Ganga raises Bhisma in her domain until he's fit for presentation to his father.
These stories are not fit for royalties or demi-gods only, either. Italian newspaper Giornale Di Arona chronicled in 2016 the online quest a young German woman embarked in so that she might locate her long estranged Italian father, who had disappeared when she was a toddler. With the help of local media, and with few scant facts she knew about him -the equivalent of the token illustrious parents of lore leave behind-, the German daughter was finally able to successfully locate her Italian father, who doesn't show up in public records nationwide: they arranged a meeting for the upcoming summer in central Italy, where he now resides.
2311
Ganga disappeared with the child to bring him up for awhile in her realm (just as what happened to Aeneas). Both Thetis (grandchild of the primeval god Pontus, the sea) and Ganga are goddesses associated with water. Ganga oversees the river Ganges; Thetis is the daughter of Nereus, a sea god. Both have many children who perish before a last one survives. Ganga's children die because of a malediction; Thetis' children die during the ritual (=bathing in the Styx river water) that ought to make them immortal.
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While there was no doubt Hercules was Zeus' son, Theseus could not be sure Poseidon was his father, as the god theoretically raped his mother the same night she slept with his mortal father. This echoes the “twice born” mythological category, whereby both a personal and transpersonal father are present. The illustrious traveler (gods, princes...) leaves a token object (swords, sandals, manuscripts...) to recognize his offspring later (akin to Theseus).
The child later ventures to discover his origins upon being teased about it. Myth-makers may merge the Phaeton and Theseus stories to produce King NoFather of Buddhist stories.
Alternatively, storytellers behind “the legend of
Gregorius. The earliest known texts of this very popular story are not in Latin but in Old French and date from about 1150”2312 may merge Theseus, Sargon2313/Moses2314, Phaeton, Oedipus and countless others. In spite of being a new Oedipus, Gregorius ends up a saintly hermit and Pope. That's the stuff the various Paul Atreides and Luke Skywalker are made of. A 25yo male kills his 65yo single mother: she wouldn't
Archibald 2001:111. The biography of Sargon (XXIV century BCE) reads thus:”My mother was a high priestess; my father I do not know. My mother conceived me and bore me in secret. She placed me in a reed basket and caulked it with pitch, then she abandoned me to the river, from which I could not escape. I was carried by the river and was found by a water carrier. He raised me to be a gardener. Then I was declared king” (Cit. by Goldman 2003:Royal Historians, Poets, And Artists). 2314 According to Exodus, the Israelites suffer slavery in Egypt. The Pharaoh orders that all male children of the Hebrews have to die.”Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman,and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.-...-Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. ” (2:1ss). Variations exist. While Sargon, Romulus/Remus, Karna and others are raised among the lower classes, Oedipus, Moses, Kalu Kumara (demon of Sri Lankan lore; the son of a launderess, he was raised by the King of Anuradhapura) and others find foster parents of high lineage. 2312 2313
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tell him who his biological father was: mythology meets real life2315.
It is what in ancient times popularized the later -more or less redshifted- Christian idea broadly summarized as the greater the sin, the greater the forgiveness. Oedipus, Tantalus and our day's banksters, murderers and criminals may -after all- be -as guru Osho put it- the Zorba who can become Buddha, the necessary foundation for the palace that is Buddha, or the paradigm of the enlightened/godly man.
“All Buddhas” are not just current Buddhas, but those of the future as well. Who are these future Buddhas? All sentient beings. Since all sentient beings have Buddha-nature , all will become Buddhas. Now let’s go one step further: all insentient beings have Dharmanature. Dharma-nature is the same as Buddha-nature. So all beings, sentient and insentient, have the same nature. (Wuling, May 19, 2017). Oedipus, too, and all other mythical arch-transgressors, had hero-powers they could bequeath. The Rig Veda ( XV century BCE or older) describes the mystic fire thus:”By the Flame one enjoys a treasure that verily increases day by day, glorious, most full of hero-power.”. Aurobindo explains that:”The heroes are the mental and moral energies which resist the assaults of ignorance, division, evil and falsehood”2316.
It isn't just about mythical figures from the mist of time. Ben-Shahar 2317 elatedly reports how legendary IBM and Johnson&Johnson founders (=the TgCom24, June 22, 2016. MAISI003 no date: lecture note 2:3. 2317 2005-6: lecture 14. 2315 2316
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hierophantic patriarch) not only forgave executives who made critical mistakes, but accompanied forgiveness with lenient words of praise:”Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. ”( Micah 7:18). As an aside, even deposed Brazilian Emperor Pedro II on his deathbed made the wish of prosperity for Brazil, the homeland he was barred from re-entering.
This is the voice that affirms. clearly and calmly and with authority, the human rights of all. This is tile energy that minimizes punishment and maximizes praise. This is the voice from the Center. the Primeval Hill within every man -...-this energy of the mature masculine in our live.(Moore&Gillette 1990:63). After Burke developed a new product that turned out to be a total dud, he was called in by General Johnson, who was chairman of the board at the time. Burke expected to be fired. Instead, General Johnson extended his hand and said: I just want to congratulate you. All business is making decisions, and if you don’t make decisions you won’t have any failures. The hardest job I have is getting people to make decisions. If you make the same decision wrong again, I’ll fire you. But I hope you’ll make a lot of others, and that you’ll understand there are going to be more failures than successes. (Ben-Shahar 2011:67). Freeman2318 tells the story of exhausted airline passengers trapped aboard a plane unable to dock at an airport under bad weather for hours because of a shortage of personnel. One of the powerless passengers has the idea to contact one of the airport's executives via a phone directory search. Shortly after having relayed his plight to the executive's wife, the airplane is allowed to dock: the marvels patriarchs can make happen.
2318
2014: Hidden Factors That Shape Negotiation.
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Such stories are a dime a dozen; all “independently corroborated”, of course. M.V. Hansen2319 claims that during the Vietnam war, a humanitarian wanted to airlift Vietnamese orphans to safety, buy could not get access to the four-star general with the U.S Army who could make it happen. So she got the general's mother on the phone (don't ask...), enlisted her support (“from a mother to another”) so that the old lady could demand of “her boy” (a U.S Army four-star general after all) that he complies, which he sheepishly does like a seven-year old caught red-handed. What about Jesus? Isn't Mother Mary going to “intercede with her son” when meek Catholics pray her?
November 26, 20132320 Berlusconi appeals to political foes so that they may “examine their conscience” (“mettersi una mano sulla coscienza”) before a vote regarding Berlusconi's removal as Senator in the aftermath of a judicial sentence. In this case, Berlusconi tantalizes both political foes and the public: shouldn't they in turn play the merciful father-god, thus letting him off the hook in sentimental rapture? The deference-demeanor ritual stalls: the Senate votes in favor of Berlusconi's removal.
Seizing another opportunity to ensorcell the rabble with sweet myths, Berlusconi hails deceased Mandela -often on tape saluting with a clenched fist 2321 in a gesture (=Communist salute) not supposed to register well with Berlusconi's 2319
2010:part 2. AGI. 2321 In 2016, Mugabe (President of Zimbabwe) unveils a 3,8 m statue of himself in a defiant attitude with a clenched fist. 2320
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reaganite credo- and urges Italians to follow the sublime African statesman's example: reconciliation should prevail2322. Berlusconi's henchwoman D. Santanchè also compares Silvio to Mandela: standing up for greater goods, both suffered persecution under inequitable regimes2323.
Of course, to the last moment is alive in the public's mind the possibility that the transgressor might go away dejected in disgrace, thus prompting narrative tension and tragic urgency.
Discredited in the wake of a political assassination and corruption scandals, Brazilian caudillo Getulio Vargas -in his new incarnation as democraticpopulist leader- committed suicide in mysterious circumstances declaring to the great Brazilian nation how he loved them, and that had given them his death after giving them his entire life without regrets:”saio da vida para entrar na historia” (I leave life behind in order to enter history), he wrote following in the footsteps of so many hero-saviors the ungrateful flock tore apart; Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi also declared:” What I got to take with me in the grave is history”. “Historical ‘heroes’ are ten-a-penny”, indeed.
The forgiveness/reunion scene may consist in a salad bar of diverse motifs. In 2005 at Besano (Italy), a 23yo bartender is killed by illegal Albanian immigrants during a brawl at the pub he works at. The usual theatrics ensue; a squabble between pro- and anti-immigrationists unfolds. The bartender's mother, 2322 2323
ANSA, December 6, 2013. Blitzquotidiano, December 6, 2013.
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however, macadamizes the unity of the pack under the beloved sign of the just war propaganda's covenant, for she would adopt an Albanian child at a distance under the sweet sign of nonjudgmental oneness that refrains from casting the first stone2324.
Ehrman tells about the famous story where Jesus refuses to pass judgment on an adulteress because everybody's tainted with sin after all:
The story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery is arguably the best known story about Jesus in the BibleÍž it certainly has always been a favorite in Hollywood versions of his life. It even makes it into Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, although that movie focuses only on Jesus's last hours (the story is treated in one of the rare flashbacks). Despite its popularity, the account is found in only one passage of the New Testament, in John 7:53-8:12, and it appears not to have been original even there. -...- Despite the brilliance of the story, its captivating quality, and its inherent intrigue, there is one other enormous problem that it poses. As it turns out, it was not originally in the Gospel of John. In fact, it was not originally part of any of the Gospels. It was added by later scribes. How do we know this? In fact, scholars who work on the manuscript tradition have no doubts about this particular case. -...- its writing style is very different from what we find in the rest of John (including the stories immediately before and after)Íž and it includes a large number of words and phrases that are otherwise alien to the Gospel. The conclusion is unavoidable: this passage was not originally part of the Gospel. How then did it come to be added? There are numerous theories about that. Most scholars think that it was probably a well known story circulating in the oral tradition about Jesus, which at some point was added in the margin of a manuscript. From there some scribe or other thought that the marginal note was meant to be part of the text and so inserted it immediately after the account that ends in John (2005:63-5, emphasis added). 2324
La Mamma...2005: no page.
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The famous holy writ that caused generations to have neurological and gastrointestinal syndromes across ages, regimes and continents; the cornerstone of popular morality in front of which people abjectly crawl in self-denial is possibly another scribal interpolation (hoax?) just as it routinely happens in our day:
Jonah Lehrer [blogger, neuroscience and psychology author] has resigned from The New Yorker, soon after new allegations that he fabricated quotes. Michael C. Moynihan says he’s uncovered something worse than Lehrer recycling his own material for New Yorker blog posts, which came to light in June. Moynihan says he couldn’t find evidence that Bob Dylan said some of the things Lehrer quotes him as saying in [the book]“Imagine: How Creativity Works.” Worse, he writes, Lehrer admitted lying to him about where he got some of the material because he “panicked.” Moynihan confirmed Lehrer’s resignation in a tweet: “Jonah Lehrer has resigned from the New Yorker and apologized to me.” (Myers 2012: no page, emphasis added)2325. A representative for Morgan Freeman says that a statement attributed to the actor regarding the Newtown, Conn., shooting is a hoax. -...Reddit users later revealed the alleged author of the Freeman hoax as a man named Mark from Vancouver. "Couple of us thought it'd be funny, since it was a well written article, to attribute it to Morgan Freeman," one reddit user wrote on the Freeman thread. "Day Later, Reddit Front Page. Bravo, Internet." (Sieczowski 2012: no page). The practice of altering texts in the process of copying them happened all the time in antiquity. In a world without electronic means of publication, photocopy machines, or even carbon paper, it was well2325
Two of the three books Lehrer authored have been withdrawn due to inconsistencies and fabrications. One of the endorsements for the publications that were withdrawn is still visible on Lehrer's website(http://www.jonahlehrer.com/books/imagine/):”he knows more about science than a lot of scientists and more about writing than a lot of writers. ”. The present writer agrees that is probably true: divine irony. Lehrer was at some point such a prominent figure that his endorsement was used to promote the works of American-Israeli behavioral economics luminary Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke university. Such cases are aplenty. In 1983, Italian sportcaster Maurizio Mosca published a sensational interview with Brazilian star soccer player Zico full of Zico's inflammatory comments. His personal friendship with Zico – Mosca claimed- had made it possible, since the champion had that far granted no interviews to Italian newspapers. Personally asked about such friendship, Zico answered simply he ignored who Mosca was: Mosca was fired as a hoaxer for making the interview up, although he later updated his memory to claim he had been victim of a conspiracy.
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nigh impossible to ensure that any copy of a text would be 100 percent accurate, without changes of any kind. This is true for all books copied in the ancient world. (Ehrman 2011:267). Ehrman continues:
This is the account of 1 John 5:78, which scholars have called the Johannine Comma, found in the manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate but not in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts, a passage that had long been a favorite among Christian theologians, since it is the only passage in the entire Bible that explicitly delineates the doctrine of the Trinity -...-.But Erasmus did not find it in his Greek manuscripts, which instead simply read: "There are three that bear witness: the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three are one." Where did the "Father, the Word, and the Spirit" go? They were not in Erasmus's primary manuscript, or in any of the others that he consulted, and so, naturally, he left them out of his first edition of the Greek text. -...-As the story goes, Erasmusâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;possibly in an unguarded momentâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; agreed that he would insert the verse in a future edition of his Greek New Testament on one condition: that his opponents produce a Greeks manuscript in which the verse could be found (finding it in Latin manuscripts was not enough). And so a Greek manuscript was produced. In fact, it was produced for the occasion. It appears that someone copied out the Greek text of the Epistles, and when he came to the passage in question, he translated the Latin text into Greek, giving the Johannine Comma in its familiar, theologically useful form. The manuscript provided to Erasmus, in other words, was a sixteenth century production, made to order. (Ehrman 2005:81-2, emphasis added). Is the pouring of the dew of forgiveness a rare occurrence as statistical probability might demand? Not at all. The broken record effect is unfortunately apparent. In 2013, an Italian physician is murdered by an Indian immigrant while she was trying to help another Indian immigrant wounded during a feud between compatriots. In December 2013, the murdered physician's mother reaches out under the sign of forgiveness and nonjudgmental oneness: she just received the 1835
season's greetings from the Indian community.
In 2005-6, Ben-Shahar2326 elatedly introduces Nelson Mandela as the quintessential great leader. It is hard to reconcile the fact that Mandela was until 2008 on U.S â&#x20AC;&#x153;terror watch listsâ&#x20AC;? with the fact that Obama ordered U.S flags to be flown at half-mast to mourn Mandela's passing2327.
Mandela also receives praise from sources other than the thrones of western power, and capitalist high places like Harvard. Are there dots to connect, perchance2328?
The South African Communist Party (SACP) joins the people of South Africa and the world in expressing its most sincere condolences to -...the entire Mandela family on the loss of what President Zuma correctly described as South Africa's greatest son, Comrade Mandela. We also wish to use this opportunity to express our solidarity with the African National Congress, an organisation that produced him and that he also served with distinction, as well as all his colleagues and comrades in our broader liberation movement. -...-At his arrest in August 1962, Nelson Mandela was not only a member of the then underground South African Communist Party, but was also a member of our Partyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Central Committee. To us as South African communists, Cde Mandela shall forever symbolise the monumental contribution of the SACP in our liberation struggle. The contribution of communists in the struggle to achieve the South African freedom has very few parallels in the history of our country. After his release from prison in 1990, Cde Madiba [=Mandela] became a great and close friend of the communists till his last days. (SACP Statement...2013:no page, emphasis added). 2005-6a:lecture 3. Biddle 2013:no page. 2328 This seemingly trivial and unobtrusive article by the South African Communist Party puts a nail in the coffin of a decade-long controversy about Mandela's relationship with the SACP, which Mandela disclaimed, and which was indignantly denounced as a canard White supremacists had spread to taint Mandela's reputation. Nothing especially new to the present writer: a former insurrectionist becomes the herald of a new society much as the various Washington, Bolivar, Mazzini, Pisacane, Codreanu, Princip, Castro, Neto, Hitler etc did. 2326 2327
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Long live the Cuban Revolution! Long live comrade Fidel Castro! (Nelson Mandela as he visited Cuba in July 1991). According to Ben-Shahar, Mandela would first consult with third parties, then reach an irrevocable decision. Scholarship seems to support such mixing of antithetical strategies, stick and carrot, irrevocable authoritarian decisions, and paternalistic forgiveness or inclusion.
Nevertheless, to the present writer it is not clear whether psychologists and management experts indulge more in immemorial fantasies about semiomnipotent patriarchs 'arriving' to settle issues, schoolyard bullies bossing people around, and 'popular ones' setting trends at school; or in actual findings at the electronic microscope, and so forth.
Dues2329, in fact, seems to chastise the culture of authority much as others seem to embrace it. The divide, once again, revolves around that media virtus (golden mean) of ancient lore nobody can exactly point to, however: there is hardly any need for top-dollar consultants.
According to Mark Dyczkowski2330, the “right measure of things” went as back as Vedic ritual sacrifices in ancient India: there is “order” in the cosmos. In Buddhist Brahmayu Sutta, Vedic scholars certify Gautama Buddha as mahapurisa (great man):”After the thanksgiving, he gets up and goes away, not too fast, nor too slowly and not as though were relieved. He wears the robe not too short, nor too 2329 2330
2010:The Manager's Role In Dealing With Conflicts. Scholar of Tantra and Shaivism.
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long, not too tight nor too loose. ”. Ovid ( Metamorphoses) begs to agree as Daedalus instructs his son Icarus thus:”“I warn you, Icarus, fly a middle course -...-Keep to the middle way””2331.
Well before Nelson Mandela, fictional commander Straker -from UK scifi epic UFO- was the supreme leader who -in the 1970 episode Kill Straker- not only forgave a subaltern who had attempted to kill him after being brainwashed by outer space foes, but explicitly mentioned he would consult with his closest associates first, then he would tell them to shut up upon hearing his irrevocable decision.
When warned by Frances Perkins in 1932 that many provisions of the New Deal were unconstitutional, [President F.D. Roosevelt] in effect shrugged and said that they'd deal with that later (his intended solution: pack the Supreme Court with cronies). In 1942 he flatly told Congress that if it didn't do what he wanted, he'd do it anyway. He questioned the patriotism of anybody who opposed his economic programs, never mind the war itself.(Goldberg 2007:92). Are UK sci-fi telepictures not one's cup of tea? Debord offers a Marxist interpretation of the same stale allegory:
Si les bureaucrates pris ensemble décident de tout, la cohésion de leur propre classe ne peut être assurée que par la concentration de leur pouvoir terroriste en une seule personne. Dans cette personne réside la seule vérité pratique du mensonge au pouvoir : la fixation indiscutable de sa frontière toujours rectifiée. Staline décide sans appel qui est finalement bureaucrate possédant (1967: point 107)2332. It is, rather, the fear of the reality of the intense focalization of natural 2331
Humpries trans.. Icarus' story probably represents a solar myth, like that of Phaeton: he rises high into the sky, then he plunges into the sea in death. 2332 French Fascist intellectual Drieu De La Rochelle referred to Stalin in almost identical terms: Stalin as the master who embodies the terror of god's omnipotence.
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wonder and power; the fear of being overwhelmed by the truth of the universe as it exists, as that truth is focussed in one human face. But Freud is right about tyrannical fathers: the more terrifying the object, the stronger the transference; the more that the powerful object embodies in itself the natural power of the world, the more terrifying it can be, in reality, without any imagination on our part. (Becker 1973:148). The
quintessential
(semi)omnipotent
patriarch
-in
his
cyclical
incarnations as leader, patriarch, hero-savior, trickster, Mussolini, Stalin, CEOs of billionaire multinationals, the Chinese Emperor...- is intrinsically neither on the left, nor on the right politically speaking, for he taps into human mind's bottomless pit.
Fiedler's contingency model in social psychology (1960s) foretells two kinds of leader: task-oriented (=gets the job done=micro-manager) and peopleoriented (=focuses on group cohesion and feelings). That's exactly what the Straker -Mandela etc- two-prong strategy of palavers followed by irrevocable decisions works like. That's equally well what the Yahweh two-prong strategy of leniency and anger outbursts works like.
Bronze-Age scribes got it much earlier than social scientists inventing theories they could tag their name to:
While a clearly negative trait which often leads the psychopath toward a downward spiraling personal life, when couched in the appropriate business language, can be misinterpreted as strategic thinking or ‘visioning,’ a rare and highly valued executive talent. Even those traits that reflect a severe lack of human feelings or emotional poverty (lack of remorse, guilt, empathy) can be put into service by corporate psychopaths, where being ‘tough’ or ‘strong’ 1839
(making hard, unpopular decisions) or ‘cool under fire’ (not displaying emotions in the face of unpleasant circumstances) can work in their favor. In sum, the very skills that make the psychopath so unpleasant (and sometimes abusive) in society can facilitate a career in business even in the face of negative performance ratings. (Can You Identify...2014:no page). Should there be any doubt regarding the symbiosis between the hierophantic patriarch and the horde in fusion, the President of the United States' arrival aboard a vessel is announced as “United States arriving”. In the Bible:”But for twenty-one days the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia blocked my way. Then Michael, one of the archangels, came to help me[=Daniel], and I left him there with the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia.”2333. In Rome, the god Quirinus, and later the goddess Roma came to embody the personification of the Roman State.
If in ancient Rome, clans had household deities ( penates, originally charged with protecting the household's storerooms), so in medieval Japan, ruling clans had distinctive kami (ujigami). The Japanese Yamato clan (in the Nara region) came to be associated with the imperial lineage, and the mystical embodiment of Japan through the Sun goddess Amaterasu.
It is therefore normal that human mind's psychotic quirks tend to associate individuals with abstract qualities that are thus personified: absolute evil arriving; suffering arriving; common humanity arrives as illegal immigrants crossover.
2333
Daniel 10:13.
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Alternatively, mister homeland first; mister immigration amnesty; mister primordialism bloviate:”Image and meaning are identical; and as the first takes shape, so the latter become clear. Actually, the pattern needs no interpretation: it portrays its own meaning.”2334;”the brand or product benefit is integral to the story. When it’s woven so deeply into the narrative that people can’t tell the story without mentioning it.”.
In 2014 sensational posh magazine reports2335 in Italy hint at an increasing number of (il)legal immigrants -even second generation- who would turn their back to western mass-democracy gobbledygook in favor of radical Islamism even after western political systems lavished all sorts of subsidies, boons and affirmative actions upon them trying to win them over...
Consciousness of sin and despair, and longing for salvation are experiential realities of people surrounded everywhere with death, the decay of the body, and the disappearance of conscious existence. For most people this is an intolerable situation, and they want to go on and continue existing, surviving death and entering an afterlife, a new incarnation, or at least the socially carried memory of their name—that is, they want to subordinate the man/woman to the creature of their illusionary imagination. (Fischer 1994:18). It seems that as long as real public figures of some import superpose themselves with, endorse or don the garb (=demeanor) of stale allegories and petrified mythologies that obsess humankind since time immemorial, a ticket for greatness (= deference) might be theirs. This in turn begs the question whether the 2334 2335
Jung in Angelo 1992:138. Such as Panorama, September 3, 2014.
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masses are kowtowing to the great leader -of the moment, of course-, or to human mind's irresistible fixations and circular proclivities:”Mythology is a validation of experience, giving it its spiritual or psychological dimension”.
A hero -after all- is someone who lived an extraordinary life, regardless of how that ranked on any moral or material scale:
in the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., “excellence in everything” was the Greek ideal. -...- The philosophical papers of that period have to do with conduct and virtue: virtue in the sense of excellence, not in the sense of good-versus-evil. -...-All judgments are transformed as you move from one position to another. Good and evil are not absolute. They are relative to which side you are on. The limitation comes where your judgment comes. (Campbell 1991:97,146). Strikingly awful behavior may be presented as a moral lesson, or the paradoxes of doubleness:”Yet the bricoleur aspect of the trickster can cause any or all of such lewd acts or objects to be transformed into occasions of insight, vitality, and new inventive creations”;” We think it quite normal for a deity, while if a human being behaved that way we'd send him to a lunatic asylum.”.
The epic of Gilgamesh undergoes considerable reworking from a Sumerian original to a later Babylonian tradition we are familiar with. The epic originally features a swashbuckling hero that startles the world with his deeds: he does not care about how that may register on any moral or material scale.
In Babylon, the epic -and flood stories- take up a sort of moral
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connotation. Morality plays suited the epoch of Hammurabi (around the XVIII century BCE) very well: the King had produced the first extensive law code under a preamble2336 that slightly resembles the Chinese mandate of heaven 2337. Zoroaster, too, had equated heaven with the category of “good governance” ( Khashathra
Vairya ), an hypostasis of Ahura Mazda.
The Chinese Duke of Zhou introduced (about 1045 BCE) the “mandate of Heaven” to justify and buttress a dynastic change on the basis of the ineptitude and corruption of the (former) ruling house the Zhou had defeated in battle. The defeat in battle, in fact, was construed as retribution visited upon the former ruling class because of its impiety and evil ways. Zhou Kings resumed autocratic rule, yet under the stipulation they pledged to rule according to piety and virtue.
Even in Hindu Mahabharata, the struggle between two sets of cousins epitomizes the clash between -as Aurobindo puts it- “ truth” ( dharma) and falsehood (adharma). The Kauravas have cheated the Pandavas, thus gaining the throne; this also grants them the support of noble men-at-arms in their retinue (=legitimate 2336
“When Anu the Sublime, King of the Anunaki, and Bel, the lord of Heaven and earth, who decreed the fate of the land, assigned to Marduk, the over-ruling son of Ea, God of righteousness, dominion over earthly man, and made him great among the Igigi, they called Babylon by his illustrious name, made it great on earth, and founded an everlasting kingdom in it, whose foundations are laid so solidly as those of heaven and earth; then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak; so that I should rule over the black-headed people like Shamash, and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind. ” (L.W King translation). 2337 Enthroned Egyptian monarchs actually became living gods as presumed incarnations or relatives of this or that deity, whereas Mesopotamian monarchs were considered as appointed by the gods, much in the way Hebrew Kings would be at a later date. Yahweh says about David of Israel:”I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by men, with floggings inflicted by human hands. ” (2 Samuel 7:14). In The Blessings Of God Ptah Upon Ramesses II at Abu Simbel and Karnak, the god addresses Ramses II thus:”I am your father who begot you to act as a King”.
1843
authority).
Because the Kauravas misuse their power, however (=the mandate of heaven concept), war ensues so that the Kauravas finally lose the ultimate battle. Goldman2338 emphasizes that ancient near-eastern myths were in a state of flux coming to and fro various cultures in the region, being thus adapted to local sensibilities again and again.
The character from The Scarlet Letter -Hester Prynne the adulteressbest epitomizes the hero:
And, as Hester Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. Women, more especiallyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought came to Hester's cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and what the remedy! Hester comforted and counselled them, as best she might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. (Hawthorne, 1850, no page). Of course, Hester Prynne is not alone. She joins the various fra' Cristoforo, Magdalene, Angulimala, Jean Valjean and their innumerable literary clones to show how arch-transgressors -which may include felons, addicts, murderers, corrupt politicians, inept plumbers, car mechanics and electricians...- are
2338
2003:Hittites and Canaanites.
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so much better (=the ugly duckling motif) than the law-abiding average schmuck, who is (not so) deep down an hypocrite, a pharisee, a closeted transgressor: a real bore.
In what the present writer terms 'the foundling reflex', the horde -or the individual- opportunely enthused shall not only let bygones be bygones (no matter what the original transgression was all about), but rise in desecrated anger to champion the foundling, that precious, wonderful soul that suffered so much: s-he has a good 'secret cause' to explain it all away in such a way that reconciliation becomes inevitable.
The lines of 1989 hit song Another Day In Paradise come to mind:”Oh think
twice...
Oh
lord,
is
there
nothing
more
anybody
can
do
Oh lord, there must be something you can say”. The former transgressor sits now atop the commodious pedestal of whichever excuse, yarn, obtuse allegory or petrified mythology may happen to be the case at the present moment. Conclusions are foregone: reconciliation must unfold. Allah is “merciful and compassionate”...so should we. As the wonderful myths mankind produced teach us:”And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more. ” (John 8:11).
The 'foundling reflex' presides over the horde recurrently marching to deliver this, that or another pariah group/individual as it no longer brooks such intolerable inequalities, '...ism' etc. The list of foundlings to champion; of tyrants to put on posthumous trial; of inequalities to redress is literally endless. 1845
This works equally well as Blacks march or riot protesting against discrimination; as animal right activists march or riot to support their beliefs. Of course, as GESTAPO (NSDAP Germany), CEKA/NKVD (Bolshevik USSR), STASI (Communist East-Germany), Securitate (Communist Romania), OVRA (Fascist Italy), PIDE (Fascist Portugal), SAVAK (Persian monarchy) went about their business, only political expediency makes room for significant differences, for even authoritarian secret police corps weren't all equally destructive.
Tocqueville here describes the social ebullience of 1848, but his description could easily portray 1688, 1789, 1949, 1959, 1968...
Dès le 25 février [1848], mille systèmes étranges sortirent impétueusement de l'esprit des novateurs, et se répandirent dans l'esprit troublé de la foule. Tout était encore debout sauf la royauté et le parlement, et il semblait que du choc de la révolution, la société elle-même eût été réduite en poussière, et qu'on eût mis au concours la forme nouvelle qu'il fallait donner à l'édifice qu'on allait élever à sa place ; chacun proposait son plan ; celui-ci le produisait dans les journaux ; celui-là dans les placards, qui couvrirent bientôt les murs ; cet autre en plein vent par la parole. L'un prétendait réduire l'inégalité des fortunes, l'autre l'inégalité des lumières, le troisième entreprenait de niveler la plus ancienne des inégalités, celle de l'homme et de la femme ; on indiquait des spécifiques contre la pauvreté et des remèdes à ce mal de travail, qui tourmente l'humanité depuis qu'elle existe. (1964:128-9). So much about a distant past's heroes and their exploits. What about our present? A website reports the following speech:
As a psychologist, I teach on a regular basis about the nature of prejudice. And we talk about how prejudice nowadays is supposed to be modern, and covert, and based on ignorance, and stereotyping. And I thought these acts aren't ignorant. This isn't the result of some 1846
covert thought. This was a well planned out act of terrorism. -...- And I think if you confronted those people they would deny it because they're cowards. -...- Diversity is more popular than segregation. Love is more popular than hate. -...- The Statue of Liberty stands every day of all of our lives theoretically welcoming people to this land to become part of us. So to say that we should act like we're colorblind I really believe is an excuse. I believe it's an excuse to remain lazy, it's an excuse to turn your head. And it's an excuse to allow these idiots to continue with their agenda. -...- I can't say thank you enough to the administration. -...- are here, and I have to say they're doing not just what they have to do administratively, but they're doing what they should be doing as human beings2339. Thus spoke the alleged victim of a 'hate crime' ('haters' had vandalized her car with racial epithets); the public rallied in desecrated anger, marched and so forth; administrators rose indignantly...so many celebrated one's possibility to be on the right side of the myth – akin to Pater's “sublime”2340-, one with the pack of entranced believers:”The sublime is rendered by prodigious power or by enormous space: when you reach a mountaintop, for instance, and the world breaks open -...-the ego is diminished. It’s strange: the less there is of you, the more you experience the sublime.”2341. The righteous will not let another Orpheus succumb to injustice until there is still time to prevent some frightening collective
sparagmos...the Greek tragedy's secret. Too bad it was a scam: the presumed victim -a person with criminal records2342- had committed the vandalism herself. Wilcox relays thus news about a 2339
Presented on Sailer 2004: no page. “We authors recognize the sublime not by an act of analytic or comparative judgment, but by our transport.” (Pater 1873: 133-134). 2341 Campbell 1991:95. 2342 The Los Angeles Times wrote “Dunn -- a Catholic converting to Judaism -- prided herself on being passionate and outspoken. But court records and interviews with colleagues, students, friends and police reveal a woman of contradiction and secrets. -...-. Gary S. Lincenberg, her California attorney, will not comment on the alleged hate crime or on her police record. James Michael Rierden, an attorney in Nebraska who represented Dunn for 2340
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Black man in Chicago who falsely claimed a gang of White racists had assaulted him for no reason in 1985:
witnesses have accused Jackson of trying to run down people on pedestrian walkways before his car hit a tree-...-. Jackson had been fired from his security guard job after it was learned that he was a convicted felon awaiting trial on charges of possessing two loaded handguns, one of which was stolen in a burglary. (Wilcox 1994:61). What are people marching, donating and rising for, then? People from all provinces of the political and credibility spectrum crank the same handle warning about impending doom of one sort or another, whereby ...ists of one foul breed or another shall march onto town to do 'you know what' to 'you know who' according to a 'master plan' the 'good guys' desperately want you to know about:“Martyr narratives continu[e] to be produced despite the end of persecution”; “identity artists” who do not “discover” but “create experiences” (G. R. Vizenor).
The site further reports:
Police and the FBI said [the culprit] cannot be charged with a hate crime. Officials with the Anti-Defamation League, the organization that authored the hate crime statute in 1987, also said that the suspected actions of [the culprit] would not qualify as a hate crime. -...- [one college official wrote back to the site columnist:] “Imagine how you might have felt if the crime was real and the Claremont an arrest four years ago, said she pleaded guilty to shoplifting, paid a $200 fine and agreed to counseling. -...Pam Manske, a friend of Dunn's, chalked up the shoplifting to high jinks. "She'd been a student -- sometimes students do goofy things," said the commercial real estate agent. -...- On Sept. 24, 1999, she was arrested and charged with driving without a license and with fictitious license plates, said Officer Katherine Finnell, a Lincoln police spokeswoman. Dunn paid $75 in fines, said chief prosecutor John McQuinn. -...- Less than a year later, on Sept. 29, 2000, a Dillard's department store employee saw Dunn putting a shoe box in a shopping bag, Finnell said. A police officer found Dunn's shopping bag contained a pair of red size 7 shoes and some Liz Claiborne jewelry: three bracelets, a necklace and a pair of earrings, Finnell said -- about $141 worth of merchandise from Dillard's. Dunn also was carrying $403 worth of steak knives, utility knives and a pair of black size 6 Enzo Angiolini shoes from a store next door, Finnell said. ” (Zamichow 2004: no page).
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Colleges ignored it.” -...-. [another official:]”I have always thought it better to respond sympathetically to a claim on my sense of justice than to reject out of hand a cry for help. If one does the former, surely one may be taken in; if one does the latter, one is condemned to cynicism.” Ibid. (Emphasis added). This case of hero-victim party liners exalt, who then turns out to be a disturbed individual with a checkered past or present is not unique. Frediano Manzi - president of Italian association SOS Racket & Usura (SOS Racket & Usury) banded to raise awareness about racketeering - recurrently alleged to have been victim of intimidation, and violent attacks, at the hands of crime syndicates he tried to expose. On October 18, 2012 La Repubblica2343 announces Manzi was sentenced to 20 months; Manzi himself had apparently commissioned his own flower stall's arson in 2011, which he had then passed off as a threat coming to him from crime syndicates on the account of his activism.
Italian film director Giuseppe Lazzari is arrested: he would allegedly have sexually abused a 11yo boy he had previously talent scouted 2344. Lazzari had erstwhile come to prominence for his denunciation of the social scourge of underage prostitution.
Racial slurs are painted on predominantly Black Churches at Lafayette (USA) in 2011. According to a FBI press release (October 16, 2012), the culprit is a person of color, Brian Toriano Crimiel. Crimiel allegedly planted false evidence to point to his ex-girlfriend (whom sources identify as White) as the culprit: 2343 2344
Presidente Dell'Associazione...2012: no page. ANSA, August 9, 2016.
1849
Once a suggestion of heroism, patriotism, or martyrdom has been made, the impetus behind personified symbol creation can and has been set in motion. This is not to imply that suggestion is as powerful as reality. If an audience has been created by suggestion and association, it is more likely to require additional substantiation if the original allegations have been challenged. Created audiences, therefore require constant manipulation. Given this manipulation, created audiences for personified symbols can be just as effective as one which is real. (Allgrove 1994:47). Saturday night TV usually follows a predictable pattern: quiz shows, movies and sports. So Georgians were in for the shock of their lives when the progovernment Imedi station reported during prime-time viewing over the weekend that Russian tanks were yet again invading their land, barely 18 months on from the short lived war of 2008. What's more, according to the channel, the country's pro-western leader Mikheil Saakashvili had been murdered. -...-Apparently the broadcast was introduced as a simulation of possible events but this warning was clearly lost on many Georgians (Levy 2010: no page). In his compilation of case studies lifted from every dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s press, Wilcox cites many occurrences such as this; such occurrences are not limited to a more or less distant past, as one actual case shows:
DARRES PARK, who had claimed he was attacked by three white men wielding baseball bats and tire irons. -...-He also said that without his knowledge of martial arts his attackers would have succeeded. Clearly, DARRES PARK had become a local hero in the fight against bigotry and prejudice. -...- the alleged attack appeared nationwide -...On 13 December [1990] DARRES PARK and a confederate were charged with three armed robberies of banks in Seattle and Battle Ground, WA -...-. Charged in the bank robberies with PARK was JOSEPH FRITZ, a white, who had "witnessed" the attack on PARK and supported his account in a statement to police at the time. -...Amazingly, PARK'S lawyer, ROBERT LEEN, said he might have robbed the banks because of brain damage from the "racial assault. " (1990:18-19, emphasis added). Vandals [in 1985] threw rocks through windows of eight Jewishowned shops ....Mayor EDWARD KOCH said the city would offer $10,000 reward ... " The Jewish Community Relations Council offered 1850
a $5,000 reward as well. The windows were broken in the predominantly Orthodox Jewish areas of Boro Park and Flatbush in Brooklyn NY. Around the nation newspapers reacted with shock and outrage and compared the incident to Kristallnacht, when Nazis terrorized Jews in pre-World War II Germany. -...- Within a month police had their man in custody. He was GARY DWORKIN, a 38 yearold Jewish resident of Boro Park. DWORKIN was charged with 14 counts, including felonies and misdemeanors. He was ordered to undergo psychiatric examination. (Ibid:14). Black students at Williams College in Massachusetts were horrified in February 1993 to find three racial slurs written on notebook paper posted on the door of the Black Student Union building. The event took place five days before the start of Black History Month. The campus convulsed with social consciousness spasms and indignant speeches condemning racism. -...-it was fully 10 days before the Williams Record, the campus newspaper, reported that Gilbert Moore, a black student, had been suspended. -...-Students at the State University of New York in Binghamton were shocked to find antiSemitic slogans spray-painted inside the door of the Jewish Student Union office in November 1988. -...-Authorities investigating the incident soon zeroed in on a suspect. He was James Oppenheim, former President of the Jewish Student Union. -...-The Judge accepted his account and in December 1989, James Oppenheim was acquitted of all charges. (Wilcox 1994:38-40). Police announced Tuesday [ October 23, 2012] they believe [Afroamerican] Sharmeka Moffitt fabricated a story about being attacked and burned Sunday night at Civitan Park in Winnsboro by three men who wrote â&#x20AC;&#x153;KKKâ&#x20AC;? on the hood of her car, and instead set herself afire. Franklin Parish Sheriff Kevin Cobb said during a press conference at the Franklin Parish Courthouse this afternoon that Moffitt's DNA and fingerprints were found on the lighter as well as charcoal lighter fluid used in the incident. (Police Say...2012: no page).
Le Monde (on 9 June 2009) announces that the president of popular French watchdog group SOS Racisme (SOS racism) has been arrested pending a financial investigation involving a co-founder, the Socialist parliamentarian J. Dray. It is hypothesized that Dray possibly benefited personally from donations (about euro 350.000 in some estimates) originally directed to SOS Racisme and/or sister 1851
organizations.
No plausible explanation except 'it felt emotionally right' is offered and -of course- the ominous mythic image of Cassandra, the prophetess who correctly predicted doom, but was never believed and we know what happened next:“people wanted to be taken in”, “they wanted to believe”, “we did not have to tell a lie at all, because every time someone came out to justify it” said the Cottingley hoaxers.
The heralds, crooners and savior-heroes of the 'best of all causes' are often deranged or bizarre individuals of dubious standing (criminals, sociopaths, informants for hire...):
Burgus had been referred to a large Chicago hospital for severe postpartum depression. Burgus alleged that while she was undergoing psychiatric therapy from 1986 to 1992, she was persuaded that she had been part of a satanic cult, had been abused by numerous men, had abused her own children, and had had sex with John F. Kennedy. Drugs and hypnosis helped her "recall" that she had cannibalized people. At one point, her husband brought in some hamburger meat from a family picnic, and the therapists agreed to test the meat to see if it was human. Burgus was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder (MPD) and developed numerous "alters" (alternative personalities). Even today, Burgus has trouble remembering what they were, in part because her therapist would get her alters mixed up with those of his other patients. (Loftus 1998:no page). thus we learn that parts of the story of the past may not ever be recalled by the person whose story it is, or was, but may nonetheless be figured in a construction of them by the analyst-narratee – a construction which is unsubstantiated, unverifiable, yet carries conviction -...- no doubt the aim of any storyteller -...-, more radically construction, working toward the goal, not of verifiability, but of conviction: toward “what makes sense.”. -...- it appears that the interpretive analytic construction and the patient's delusional construction are -...- two versions of narrative that test themselves 1852
against one another, together working toward the construction of the “complete” and satisfying narrative text. Not only does the patient, in any successful analysis, become his own analyst, the analyst also becomes the patient, espousing his delusional system, working toward the construction of fictions that can never be verified other than by the force of the conviction that they convey (Brooks 1994:59-60). This is invariably brought to ongoing attention when nailing foes to their discredited ideologies' ultimate consequences, but is otherwise swiftly ignored, rationalized or camouflaged as long as friends are concerned.
Discussing ancient drama, Rexroth comments:
Greek philosophy and literature, like American, was peculiarly medical in its outlook. Unlike Americans, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Aristotle, Plato, in ethics, psychology, politics, were health oriented. Human conduct was described and judged ultimately in terms of man at his physical and mental best. Euripides, like American medicine or psychology or literature, was morbidity oriented. he is the most psychological of classic writers, at least in our sense, but only because we define psychology in terms of pathology. "Who is well?" Euripides asks this question again and again in every play. It was a nonsensical question to the classic Greek thinker to whom the traditions of Aesculapian and Hippocratic medicine still determined the understanding of human minds and motives. (1989:10) therapeutic culture— the primary vocation of which is to heal—must generate a narrative structure in which suffering and victimhood actually define the self. Indeed, the therapeutic narrative functions only by conceiving of life events as the markers of failed or thwarted opportunities for self development. Thus the narrative of self-help is fundamentally sustained by a narrative of suffering. This is because suffering is the central “knot” of the narrative, what initiates and motivates it, helps it unfold, and makes it “work.” (Illouz 2008:173). Being scolded and finger-pointed by the 'divine other' resurrecting from the flaming pits of our presumed hate, indifference and endemic murderous tendencies seems a favorite cathartic pastime that increasingly replaces the sermons 1853
of established religions in decline. It is as old as man. Hindu epic Silappatikaram (I century CE) tells of penniless, yet valiant widow Kannagi, who wanders the streets of Madurai protesting against a miscarriage of justice: her husband had been unjustly executed as a thief. She protests, and asks whether any good people are there to avenge this injustice. As nobody answers her call, her anger turns the city of Madurai to ashes, and she ascends to heaven, rumored to be an incarnation of goddess Parvati. In Keelagudalur (Tamil Nadu, India), a temple to Kannagi as Mangala Devi exists. The lines of 1989 hit song Another Day In Paradise come to mind:”Oh think twice... Oh lord, is there nothing more anybody can do Oh lord, there must be something you can say”. Attendees choke, weep and retch as they recall aghast “that one time when” they were uttering Phil Collins' words in abject desperation as nobody was listening.
Freddie Blassie and Rick Rude weren't perhaps far off the mark by calling the public who had paid to see them perform “pigs” and “pencil-necked sweat-hogs”, which is definitely a few notches below the 'shepherd and sheep' allegory.
Some
among
the
masters
of
acceptable
discourse
inside
the
media/entertainment machine not only talk the talk, but walk the...walk as well in their...'appreciation' for the files and ranks of meek artificial kin members eager to
1854
be(come) one -as Campbell characterizes-.
In 2012, Tamil-British singer M.I.A directs “the middle finger” to the camera during a NFL main event. Outrage and lawsuits exude as M.I.A frames the gesture within politically authenticated drivel:”it's OK for me to promote being sexually exploited as a female, than to display female empowerment through being punk rock ”.
Once again, symbolic bunk earns everyone a free pass. In other words, the act constitutes no mindless lack of respect for paying fans and employers alike on the part of a lavishly paid celebrity, but the actualization on the earthly plane of the sublime value of “female empowerment”.
ABCNews reports on April 6, 2001: Two teenage girls filed a lawsuit against cable music channel MTV, saying they were sprayed with excrement as they stood next to the stage during the taping of the aptly named Dude, This Sucks. (no page). In the United States there is even a pathos of inverted emphasis: the goal is not to grow old, but to remain young; not to mature away from Mother, but to cleave to her. And so, while husbands are worshiping at their boyhood shrines, being the lawyers, merchants, or masterminds their parents wanted them to be, their wives, even after fourteen years of marriage and two fine children produced and raised, are still on the search for love—which can come to them only from the centaurs, sileni, satyrs, and other concupiscent incubi of the rout of Pan, either as in the second of the above-recited dreams, or as in our popular, vanilla-frosted temples of the venereal goddess, under the make-up of the latest heroes of the screen. (Campbell 1949:10). Given the overwhelming percentage of cranks, paid provocateurs, and 1855
possibly deranged people involved in these situations -which keep sorting the desired effects in spite of it all-, it is possible to argue that -as in Greek tragedy- all there is is an avalanche of emotion that should cleanse our souls, train us to obedience, and reinforce tribal taboos:â&#x20AC;? Mos requires neither deliberation, nor judgment, but praise or blameâ&#x20AC;?.
In other words, what people are reacting to and dancing around is the
mos -those age-old images and situations tailored to present circumstances- and not the individual hoaxer or situation. The oblivious crowd will rise in defense not so much of the craft and originality of the Harry Potter series - although they may claim they do so- as it does in the defense of the sensations it affords. Put differently, people addicted to a(ny) particular medicine do not exactly swear by the quality of any given brand, even if they sometimes say so; they are addicted to the sensations and feelings the chemical affords them.
Martyr narratives' appeal is independent from actual persecution as they simply allow the popular 'longing for the zero hour of the myth' to take once more center stage in palpable form.
Prosecutions
against
Christians
were
not
the
genocidal
(=deliberate&systematic) slaughter the lore rhapsodizes about, but a constellation of minor, short-lived local repressions: in the Rome region under Nero; or in Bitinia under Pliny the Younger, for example. Only with Decius (249-51 CE) and later Roman Emperors such as Valerian (253-59) and Diocletian (284-305) prosecution 1856
took a more centralized -though always unequally applied- form.
Well before the III century, however, Christians had been penning gutwrenching volumes full of ghastly fire and brimstone apocalyptic imagery of universal slaughter legions of shocked eye-witnesses confirmed:
It is widely thought that from its early days Christianity was an illegal religion, that Christians could not confess their faith openly for fear of governmental persecution, and that as a result they had to go into hiding, for example, in the Roman catacombs. As it turns out, none of that is true. Strictly speaking, Christianity was no more illegal than any other religion. In most times and places, Christians could be quite open about their faith. There was rarely any need to “lie low.” It is true that Christians were sometimes opposed by pagans for being suspicious and possibly scurrilous, just as most “new” religions found opponents in the empire. But there were no imperial decrees leveled against Christianity in its first two hundred years, no declarations that it was illegal, no attempt throughout the empire to stamp it out. It was not until the year 249 CE that any Roman emperor—in this case it was the emperor Decius— instituted an empire-wide persecution of Christians. Before Decius, persecutions were almost entirely local affairs. More often than not they were the result of mob violence rather than “official” opposition initiated by local authorities.(Ehrman 2011:183). The voyeur and the busybody can thus again peep while the next saviorhero is being torn apart or subjected to indignities,”the need to make the experience of the past into the present”, “ancient events continually held up for emulation”, as the phenomenon of civilians donning uniforms in order to impersonate veterans in public -for one- shows.
All martyrs meet these criteria. Firstly, we have previously established that martyrs, particularly those in revolution, help manifest and induce a millenarian expectation within their communities. Secondly, we have also recognized that martyrs embody an aura of persecution 1857
which invokes strong emotive, often sympathetic, sentiments. Finally, this sympathy, while not always honored or revered, can at least be respected. When comparing the same criteria to patriots and heroes in revolution, it becomes obvious that as a collective body these figures don't adhere to the apex of the hierarchy, in absolute terms. -...Revolutionary martyrs, even when used in a secular sense, are sacrosanct figures. Originally, merely witnesses to God's grace, martyrs rose to be regarded as first among a messiah's followers. They were conceived to be extraordinary beings which possessed extraordinary powers. These powers included a vision for redemption and a special influence with a higher authority that would intercede on behalf of one group to help sustain, if not sway their struggle toward victory. Heroes and patriots, on the other hand, are ordinary beings who perform extraordinarily well in given situations. They are susceptible to human frailty and weaknesses and they often fall from grace.' (Allgrove 1994:48-9). In 1998 the Italian government (a coalition between radical and reformist left-wing groups axed around the former Communist Party) hosted for a while the leader of the insurrectionist Kurdish Communist Party (PKK) Ocalan. The ideological aspects are of no consequence here; what matters, though, is that militant groups of elated left-wing youth started spraying walls with slogans hailing the PKK their leaders had just spoon-fed them. As the international crisis mounted, Ocalan was forced to leave, only to be captured and deported to Turkey later on; the PKK craze evaporated as fast as it had materialized.
Left-wing hobos quickly reverted to other series of graffiti. This clearly shows what even fringe militants of radical disused ideologies only care about is toeing the party line, wherever their leaders happen to have drawn it. It is highly dubious they ever had -or acquired- a reasoned opinion of the Turkish situation.
The PKK craze was such a rage back then that Associated Press 1858
announced in 1996:
Another Born documentary purported to show a camp in Turkey of the Kurdish Workers' Party, which has been fighting for an independent homeland. Bearded men were shown building a bomb. Prosecutors say there wasn't a bomb and the men weren't Kurds _ they were Albanian actors. And it was filmed in Greece, not Turkey. (Maker Of...1996: no page). People possibly love the adrenaline rush and stomach butterflies they experience as they are convinced to make an highly supercharged ethical statement about themselves, no matter what the statement is exactly about:
Brown [wrote about] -...- 'mass conversion', in which the rabble who gathered around an aristocrat, or around a miracle-worker, would suddenly take up the Christian name - in imitation of the one or in awe of the other without any process of cultural or ethical instruction (Cooper no date:25). People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life extnote. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about, and that's what these clues help us to find within ourselves. (Campbell&Moyers 1991:12). Leaving China in complete dejection, exiled Tibetan Buddhist monks rapidly transited from the abject conditions of Indian refugee camps to worldly pursuits and empire building, in spite of Arnaud Desjardins' righteous warning that Tibetan Buddhists were 'determined not to enter the international commodity market2345'-like Hindu sages had already done-.
extnote 2345
Buddhism rephrases this concept as the will to be happy (note of this writer). 1966.
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On one end of the gamut, pulp fiction and sci-fi author L.R. Hubbard 2346 (Scientology founder); on the other end Tibetan monks ended up ministering to a diverse crowd of spiritually deprived westerners: protesting hippies, novelty seekers, deluded celebrities, pseudo-intellectuals, ego-tripping millionaires, welfare-fatigued drones...
Action movie star and eminent contributor Steven Seagal - whose celebrity indeed helped Tibetan Buddhism into the mainstream- was recognized as a
tulku2347, the reincarnation of spiritually gifted sage Chungdrag Dorje (treasure reveler2348). Great master Penor Rinpoche of the Nyingma lineage 2349 issued a statement:
In February of 1997 I recognized my student, Steven Seagal, as a reincarnation (tulku) of the treasure revealer Chungdrag Dorje. Since there has been some confusion and uncertainty as to what this means, I am writing to clarify this situation. Traditionally a tulku is considered to be a reincarnation of a Buddhist master who, out of his or her compassion for the suffering of sentient beings, has vowed to take rebirth to help all beings attain enlightenment. To fulfill this aspiration, a tulku will generally need to go through the complete process of recognition, enthronement and training. -...- In the case of Steven Seagal, he has been formally recognized as a tulku, but has not been officially enthroned. He has also not undergone the lengthy 2346
“Perhaps the most “mainstream” of the cult-like religions is the Church of Scientology (Bainbridge and Stark 1980; Miller 1998;Wakefield 1991). In the 1950s L. Ron Hubbard founded Scientology, which evolved from an over-reaching, pseudo-scientific psychological treatment program called Dianetics. Hubbard may have had bipolar disorder. He was an imaginative and prolific science fiction writer. According to biographical accounts, he could be temperamental, erratic, paranoid, phobic, depressed and grandiose. His most unusual delusion was that he had visited heaven on another planet, forty-three trillion years ago; and then again forty-two trillion years ago.” (Polimeni 2012:185). 2347 Tulkus are a particular category of Lamas. The Dalai Lama, the (former) chief of the Tibetan government in exile, is a tulku. 2348 In Vajrayana, a category of Saints fated to bring back the long lost teachings of great masters such as Padma Sambhava. 2349 There are several main lineages in Tibetan Buddhism.
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process of study and practice necessary to fully realize what I view as his potential for helping others. When I first met him, I felt he had the special qualities of a tulku within him. According to the Great Vehicle (Mahayana) of the Buddhist tradition, all beings have within them the potential for becoming Buddhas. With Steven Seagal I perceived this potential to be particularly strong as accords with being a tulku. In the past, whenever I have met someone that I feel is a tulku, I have always consulted with other masters of the Nyingma lineage such as Dudjom Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and other senior lineage holders. Similarly, after my experience of meeting Steven Seagal, I consulted with another important Nyingma master and with his concurrence, recognized Steven Seagal as a tulku. (1999: no page). Yet it is not only about adolescents trying to be cocky, hobos from flop or ale houses, spiritually deprived novelty seekers, exposure-seeking celebrities and their ilk. No less than esteemed academic Richard Dawkins starred in two documentaries Enemies Of Reason, whose title and approach is clumsily theological in nature: Slaves To Superstition and The Irrational Health Services.
With an atmospheric music worth of any 'worlds in collision' movie, Dawkins2350 exposes -with the facial mimicry of a consummate actor- internet conspiracies such as â&#x20AC;&#x153;the malicious and utterly unfounded rumor that 4.000 Jews were tipped off by Israeli agents -...- on 9-11â&#x20AC;? that leave the viewer wonder about what exactly that says regarding his crusade against alternative health methods.
It is also interesting to ponder what people like Dawkins are touting in their apology of Darwin. It is not by chance that science could once be used to unquestioningly buttress that from which today people recoil in horror; what once
2350
2007:Slaves To Superstition.
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constituted the gem of clinical science -for example atavism pioneered by eminent Jewish-Italian scientist Lombroso (1835-1909) or eugenics - is today shun as politically tainted, bogus '...ism'.
Most will embrace the thesis that a little Hitler, Lombroso or Nietzsche lurks in the shadow of every volume of eugenic literature ever published. The same folks, however, will be much less willing to admit a little Marx, Mao or Liebknecht2351 lurks in the shadow of every volume of Darwinist literature ever published: Russian revolutionist Plekhanov described Marxism as Darwinism in its application to social science. Honoring Marx at his funeral, Engels explicitly compared Marx with Darwin.
Historian of science Gould explains how
The most ardent materialists of the nineteenth century, Marx and Engels, were quick to recognize what Darwin had accomplished and to exploit its radical content. In 1869, Marx wrote to Engels about Darwin's Origin:”Although it is developed in the crude English style, thisis the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view”. A common bit of folklore -that Marx offered to dedicate volume 2 of Das Kapital to Darwin (and that Darwin refused) turns out to be false. But Marx and Darwin did correspond, and Marx held Darwin in very high regard . (I have seen Darwin's copy of Das Kapital in his library at Down House. It is inscribed by Marx who calls himself a "sincere admirer" of Darwin. Its pages are uncut. Darwin was no devotee of the German language.) (1977:26). Concepts were “in the air” well before Darwin. Anarchist leader Bakunin
Karl Liebknecht, Co-founder of radical left-wing German Spartakusbund. He organized a Soviet-style insurrection at Berlin in 1919. The Social-democratic government repressed the uprising: he was tortured and killed in custody. 2351
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had written in 1842:”The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too! ”2352. Readers be the judge. It is so shamefully easy to detect all the backstage deals and political claptrap pulling the wires of 'science' the current regimes or political climate have no stake in.
In short, what did Lombroso do? He applied Darwin's evolutionary theories and Victorian materialism and scientism ( a word introduced in 1870 according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary) to criminology. Clinician Lombroso basically thought that -broadly speaking- criminals, antisocials and their lot could be detected by way of bodily features (for example by way of skull measurements).
We're not far from Lombroso – or NSDAP eugenics- even today, although the polarity seems reversed. Throwbacks, defectives and their ilk need special leniency on the very same basis that allotted them exclusion, sterilization or death in ages now bygone; they need compassionate advocates, not the hangman:
As interesting as the philosophical tenets of the doctrines of criminal responsibility are to debate, most people, including the US Supreme Court justices, argue that whereas individuals with brain differences or abnormalities might not warrant a complete exception from all criminal sanctions, the presence of such abnormalities does diminish their personal culpability. It was this language the US Supreme Court justices used when they eliminated the death penalty for youth -...-.In essence, the Supreme Court’s position is that populations of individuals with different behavioral profiles, and therefore different brain profiles, can be less culpable than healthy normal populations with respect to the death penalty. Juveniles who have not yet had time to reach full brain maturation and individuals with low IQ who have significant brain gray matter 2352
Notebooks Of A Frenchman, Dolgoff trans.
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density are less culpable than normal adult populations because their brains are different. These positions are well supported by extensive behavioral evidence indicating youth and individuals with low IQ are fundamentally different from healthy adults, and the associated new neuroscience further bolsters this position. -...-Neuroscience studies are routinely showing that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and most other major mental illnesses are associated with impairments in brain structure, function, and connectivity. (Kiehl 2014:213-4). But the key point is that the zero degrees of empathy in borderlines arises from abnormalities in the empathy circuit of the brain. -...-genetic makeup can change how your brain responds to other people’s emotions(Baron-Cohen 2011:64,134). The opposite might chance to apply at all times, however:
Buddhaghosa describes the protuberance as a mass of flesh covering the forehead and extending to the base of the ears, resembling a royal turban that symbolizes sovereign power. Buddhaghosa also asserts that this feature can refer to the fact that the Buddha’s head is perfectly rounded like a water bubble -...- The Chinese pilgrims Faxian and Xuanzang claimed to have seen the bone relic of the Buddha’s usnisa in a monastery in Hadda in modern-day Afghanistan. Faxian described it as a bone four inches in diameter and shaped like a wasp’s nest or an arched hand. Xuanzang said it was twelve inches in diameter. In depictions of the Buddha in India, it is often a round lump on top of his skull covered with hair curls (Powers 2009:15). the peculiar shape of [Confucius]'s skull which, according to tradition, bulged out into a hillshaped protuberance and gained him the name K'iu, i. e., hillock. (Laufer 1912:210). Several civilizations -such as in Mesopotamia, Suriname, Chile, Malta, Egypt; among the Olmec and Nazca- in both pre-historic and historic times artificially modified skulls to assume an elongated shape (=cone-head):
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Examples of kinship based identities expressed through head shaping include a range of group identities - such as family relations, lineage or ethnicity – or hereditary personal positions. Furthermore, intentional cranial modification can also be related to a differentiation between the sexes or genders, religious or mythological motivations, and aesthetic notions within society (Van Duijvenbode 2012:2). Are Lombroso's skull measurements resting on such an awkward logic? Politics set aside, levels of technological sophistication changed dramatically since Lombroso's times, yet today as well one may look at those colorful charts of the human brain, with areas responsible for different functions -such as speech, memory etc- outlined in different colors, which is what phrenologists did with the skull: Gall's craniology he expounded across Europe in 1805-07.
Where phrenology ultimately got it wrong was in extrapolating this hypothesis to suggest that a person’s mental faculties had distinctive signatures in the shape of the skull. -...- But the idea that the brain is modular, with specific regions having specific functions, remains a fundamental concept in neuroscience today. And modularity received support in the second half of the 19th century with the discovery of patients with circumscribed lesions who lost specific functions. (Viskontas 2017:59-60). “One reliable difference in the psychopathic brain is that they have less volume in the frontal lobe -...- the site of self-control -...- and more volume in the reward center of the brain-...- the striatum” 2353. An authority on psychopathy, professor of translational neuroscience Kiehl quips:
In other words, the weird P3 was literally diagnostic of psychopathy. Ninety-seven percent of the psychopaths showed this 2353
DeWall 2013: Taming The Impulsive Beast. Newberg (2012:How God Changes The Brain ) mentions the same subject; to frontal lobe anomalies, Newberg adds the possibility of an increased activity in the brain's limbic system.
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weird brain wave response, and none of the nonpsychopaths showed any evidence of it. -...-Patients with brain damage to the lateral and medial temporal lobe have the same weird P3 response as psychopaths. -...-The amygdala and the anterior and posterior cingulate were -...-less active in psychopaths than in nonpsychopaths. -...-Psychopaths showed reduced gray matter in the orbital frontal cortex, amygdala, hippocampus, insula, temporal pole, and in the anterior and posterior cingulate. The entire paralimbic circuitry was impaired. -...- The incarcerated youth with elevated callous and unemotional traits as assessed by the Youth Psychopathy Checklist had the same brain abnormalities as the adults with psychopathy. The brain plots of the youth and adults were uncannily similar.(2014:83,86,100,182,184). Political claptrap and levels of technological sophistication aside, such as statement could have easily been Lombroso's. Of course, phrenologists' technical understanding of how the brain's various areas worked was rudimentary in comparison with today's.
Science is continually redefining its subject, method and understanding even today:
They found that pathological liars had 14 percent less gray matter than the control group, a common finding for many psychologically impaired individuals. What could this mean? One possibility is that since the pathological liars had fewer brain cells (the gray matter) fueling their prefrontal cortex (an area crucial to distinguishing between right and wrong), they find it harder to take morality into account, making it easier for them to lie. -...-Yang and her colleagues also found that pathological liars had 22 to 26 percent more white matter in the prefrontal cortex than nonâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;pathological liars. With more white matter (remember, this is what links the gray matter), pathological liars are likely able to make more connections between different memories and ideas (Ariely 2012:84). Aren't by chance the ape-like characteristics Lombroso detected in his
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criminal brutes and sociopathic throwbacks very much in tune with Darwin's posh theories that basically delight certain people mostly because they evict the supernatural from the world?
Aveling belonged to a group of radical atheists. He sought Darwin 's official approval, and status as dedicatee, for a volume he had edited on Darwin's work and his (that is Aveling's, not necessarily Darwin's) view of its broader social meaning (published in 1881 as The Student's Darwin, volume two in the International Library of Science and Freethought). Darwin, who understood Aveling's opportunism and cared little for his antireligious militancy, refused with his customary politeness, but with no lack of firmness. Darwin ended his letter to Aveling (not to Marx, who did not treat religion as a primary subject in Das Kapital) by writing [in 1880]:”It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds which follows from the advance of science, It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, and I have confined myself to science”. (Gould 2011:124). It wasn't even as original as groupies would want readers to believe. Darwin (1809-1882) may have considered thought as “a secretion of the brain”, but the analogy went as far back as French Cabanis (1757-1808), who considered that the brain digests thought much as the liver secretes bile. Hegel, too, proposed a version of phrenology as “skull teaching”, which Gall popularized as craniology (1805-07).
La Mettrie (1709-51) would have written2354 about the human soul as one of the human body apparatuses that a surgeon might one day successfully
2354
according to Aguerre (Le Vampire 1984: episode 3).
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dissect:â&#x20AC;?One is sometimes inclined to say that the soul is situated in the stomach, and that Van Helmont, who said that the seat of the soul was in the pylorus, made only the mistake of taking the part for the whole. â&#x20AC;?2355. Darwinism enthralled Marx, Engels, K. Liebknecht, Mao -who declared Chinese Socialism rested upon Darwin's theory- and other left-wing revolutionists for a reason.
It soon turned out people couldn't have it both ways, and eugenics took a turn to the right in the 1930s in high consistency with Darwin's core concepts:
There is certainly a sizeable chasm between Heinrich Himmler and Margaret Sanger [U.S birth control activist, eugenist, 1879-1966]. Sanger was not just opposed to the violence of abortion but also outright condemned the use of the "lethal chamber" in "Pivot of Civilization " Yet, Himmler's and Sanger's ideology not only share an ideological wellspring, but more importantly a willingness to act on their personal prejudices. Their commonalities are more than mere coincidence, and their methodology evidences this. Sanger shares with the National Socialists, and namely Himmler's SS officers, a disdain for "sentimentality" "charity" and "benevolence:' Both saw "sentimentality" as dangerous hurdle to be overcome in order to enact their eugenic policies. The "Pivot of Civilization" repeatedly attacks the church for its "crimes of charity". Again, the National Socialists and Sanger share an admiration with Nietzsche as the source for this disdain for traditional morality -...-Notably so. Sanger also credits Thomas Huxley, better known as Charles Darwin's " bulldogâ&#x20AC;? for this concept of the "crimes of charity" (Pg. 109). Sanger credits this view on Huxley's attack on the Salvation Army's condemnation of the "debauch of sentimentalism". Here again, Sanger finds Thomas Huxley's political view of Darwinism appealing, and finds a kindred spirit in Nietzsche (Samaan 2012:305). A disciple of the anarchist Emma Goldman--another eugenicist-Sanger became the nation's first "birth control martyr" when she was arrested for handing out condoms in 1917. In order to escape a 2355
La Mettrie, Man A Machine (1748), Bussey trans.
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subsequent arrest for violating obscenity laws, she went to England, where she fell under the thrall of Havelock Ellis, a sex theorist and ardent advocate of forced sterilization. She also had an affair with H. G. Wells, the selfavowed champion of "liberal fascism."-...-The marriage of statism and eugenic racism motivated Progressive Era thinkers like Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, E. A. Ross, and Richard Ely. Conservatives should ask themselves how such sentiments are any different coming from Buchanan. Meanwhile, liberals who think such ideas earn Buchananites the fascist label need to explain why progressives are absolved from that charge when they believed precisely the same things.(Goldberg 2007:155,224). In order to gentlemanly exonerate Darwin 2356 from such awful charges, MacNeill shoehorns:
Why does this idea sound peculiar, even threatening, to most people, especially social scientists? And, more importantly, why does this idea generate so much controversy in the public sphere? Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, the dominant social theory about human behavior and motivation was what has since become known as social Darwinism. Despite its name, social Darwinism owes few of its main ideas to the work of Charles Darwin. Rather, it is most closely associated with the social theories of English political scientist, philosopher, and sociologist Herbert Spencer. Central to Spencer’s philosophy was the idea that evolution is progressive; it begins with primitive unorganized matter, which then steadily develops into more complex and more perfectly formed systems, from atoms to cells, from cells to animals, and ultimately to humans and human societies. This idea has been called evolutionism, and actually predates Darwin’s theories by at least a century. Lamarck’s theory of evolution by means of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, published almost half a century before the Origin, was another of the central works of evolutionism. Like Spencer’s, Lamarck’s theory was relentlessly progressive, assuming that all living organisms evolved into more complex forms in a steady drive toward greater and greater perfection, once again reaching its culmination in the evolution of 2356
It is fallacious to put too much weight on these 'prophetical' relationships of antecedence and consequence. Yet, since this is done all the time (“all roads lead to Hitler”, as some said for example), it is appropriate how many might want to exempt their favorite leader, thinker or initiator from a treatment that appears not only appropriate, but morally dutiful in other cases.
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humans. Spencer proposed essentially the same idea, but proposed a different mechanism by which such progressive evolution occurred. Spencer called this mechanism “survival of the fittest,” a phrase that Alfred Russell Wallace recommended to Darwin as a replacement for natural selection. Darwin eventually adopted it, using it interchangeably with natural selection in the sixth and final edition of the Origin of Species. (2010:31). Since scientific theories are based on metaphors, it could be said that metaphors are how social change happens. -...-Metaphor is a means for feeling something at deeper levels. -...- These metaphors provide the listener with a holistic experience.(Hermanson 2017:19). Others prefer a broader -yet still fideistic in nature- explanation that rivals with that of any established religion:
Consider the notable technological and science achievements in the Victorian era: pseudosciences such as clairvoyance or misinterpretations such as Social Darwinism and eugenics also flourished among the better-educated British and American upper and middle classes. Juxtaposed against the seeming miracles of the trans Atlantic telegraph or airplanes, Victorian pseudoscience, e.g., séances to “contact the dead”, seem less farfetched. Given a steady stream of technical marvels, the line between science and fiction in the educated public can begin to blur, and pseudoscience beliefs can grow. (Losh&Nzkewe 2010:8-9, emphasis added). Of course, there are evolutionary biologists who have been guilty of this kind of confusion themselves. The so-called “science” of eugenics offers clear examples of some evolutionary biologists misrepresenting their science as advocacy. (MacNeill 2011:31). Technology -unlike science- is both purposeful, and necessarily includes a moral -or normative- aspect. Science -on the other hand- is neither about purposes, nor has it any direct moral implications as science. (MacNeill 2011: lecture 4)2357. 2357
The present writer shares an opposite view. Technology -for the present writer- is more neutral than science. A cane is a tool that can be used to either help the elderly cross the street, or a weapon used to kill or injure them. A sharp blade may serve to prepare food, or to threaten or injure a person. In other words, the manufacture of sharp objects may -or may not- signal offensive intentions, whereas the development and manufacture of missiles, explosives, cannons, spy apparatuses, bacteriological compounds etc leaves little room
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That we can separate out the positivist Darwin from the ideologue, either within the Origin and other relatively strictly scientific works, or between what he said about species and what he went on to say about humanity and society; or that we can separate the Darwin and Wallace scientific theory from the wider debate embracing, most notably, Chambers, Spencer, and (Lyell's version of) Lamarck. Then there is the attempt to privilege natural selection as the mechanism of evolution and deny the real strength of other mechanisms in the Origin, and their growing prominence in subsequent editions and in Darwin's other writings.-...-Nature is a societal category, and so is God. The ideological process that, it seems to me, underlies these developments is one that must be seen as arising in nineteenthcentury secularization and that culminates in twentieth-century functionalism and sociobiology. That process is the naturalization of value systems. If we look at the debate about man's place in nature in those terms, we have to look much more widely: that is, look backward into a wider process of biological naturalization in the nineteenth-century movement that embraced the work of St. Simon, of Comte, of Gall. Looking forward, we have to consider much more carefully the biologization of human sciences, which is most prominently displayed in the present in ethology and sociobiology. (Young 1985: no page). Isn't this a retelling of the mythical fall? Isn't this another triangle in which a sinister Eve (=bad scientists) had led astray a gullible Adam (=the public) with the â&#x20AC;&#x153;misinterpretationâ&#x20AC;? of the rules of a divine order (=evolution/Darwinism) at the behest of an immoral instigator (=racism, euro-centrism...)?
Darwin's cheerleaders are found across the political spectrum. A famous Christ-mythicist on the fringe of acceptable academic discourse, R.M. Price (who dubs himself a conservative) not only vehemently discards any filiation between Darwinism and Communism, but wonders how such link could be established to
for doubt. Some branches of science -however- exist -or are created- purely in the service of either military and/or political goals. Bernays knew that too well when he had 'scientific studies' cooked to extol the advantages, or minimize the disadvantages, of products his patrons had to sell.
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begin with2358.
Is this preposterous, commodious attitude based on emotional truth and political convenience reasonable if one considers the credentials of at least some of the main proponents of Social Darwinism? Should readers in emotional rapture connect Darwinism with Marxism and the countless deaths Social-Communist regimes provoked in history?
Eugenics -and the corollary of racial classification(s)- was very much part of the landscape, and not only among selected cultures such as the German one. British Prime Minister Disraeli (1804-81) as a litterateur weaved around Jewry he belonged to a web of orientalist fantasies that espoused eugenic imagery.
Eugenic preoccupations gave rise to rather awkward situations:
In 1903, there was an interesting U.S. Supreme Court case about a Sikh. The law said that naturalization was open to free white persons, and this law was broadened after the Civil War to include persons of African descent. One year earlier, in 1902, there had been a Supreme Court case with a Japanese American ( Ozawa v. United States), and the Supreme Court, in denying citizenship to this Japanese American, said that “white” meant Caucasian. According to the prevailing racial theories of the time, Sikhs and Hindus from India were Caucasians. But the court decided in United States v. Thind (1923) that you had to be white not in a scientific sense, but in a popular sense, and so the Sikh man was denied citizenship. (Prothero 2005:32). Involuntary sterilization was not only invoked, but legally sanctioned in the U.S until 1976 (the same year “marital rape” stopped being legal). Indiana (USA)
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Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio show, March 20, 2014 “Debunking Bible Inerrancy”.
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blazed the trail as involuntary sterilization started to be applied in 1899 ( a law was in effect between 1907 and 1974) against various categories of “degenerates”. As early as 1849 and well before Darwin, G. Lincecum (a Texan physician) had proposed a bill in Wisconsin to mandate involuntary sterilization of undesirables.
American-Indians were also targeted well into the 1970s; while guesstimates are in order, N. Shoemaker argues that the fertility rate of Native Americans fell from 6,1 to 2,4 between 1960 and 1980: hardly a natural phenomenon. It was U.S “racial hygiene” policies that schooled German authorities in the 1920s, hence the upcoming NSDAP regime, and not the other way around.
In [1909] The Promise of American Life, [progressive intellectual]Herbert Croly speculated that a "really regenerated state government" would take steps to prevent "crime and insanity" by regulating who could marry and procreate. Such an empowered state, he wrote archly, "might conceivably reach the conclusion that the enforced celibacy of hereditary criminals and incipient lunatics would make for individual and social improvement even more than would a maximum passenger fare on the railroads of two cents a mile." The state, he insisted, must "interfere on behalf of the really fittest. -...-"He who thinks not of himself primarily, but of his race, and of its future, is the new patriot," explained Van Hise, a founder of the American conservation movement and president of the University of Wisconsin during its glory days as the premier training ground for American progressives.(Goldberg 2007:146-147, emphasis added). Let's take the 1916 book The Passing Of The Great Race by U.S conservationist and chairman of the New York zoological society Madison Grant:
A rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit—in other words,Social failures—would solve the 1873
whole question in a century, as well as enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals and insane asylums. The individual himself can be nourished, educated and protected by the community during his lifetime, but the state through sterilization must see to it that his line stops with him or else future generations will be cursed with an ever increasing load of victims of misguided sentimentalism. This is a practical, merciful and inevitable solution of the whole problem and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased and the insane and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types. (1936:50-51). That's not surprising the book was popular in Germany also:
In his unpublished autobiography, Whitney reported a conversation he had with Madison Grant about the letter from the Fuhrer. Because he thought that Grant might be interested in Hitler's letter he showed it to him during their next meeting. Grant only smiled, reached for a folder on his desk, and gave Whitney a letter from Hitler to read. In this, Hitler thanked Grant for writing The Passing of the Great Race and said that "the book was his Bible." Whitney concluded that, following Hitler's actions, one could believe it. (Kuhl 1994:85). C.R. Henderson, U.S pastor and professor of sociology, contemplated in 1901 drastic measures to deal with those likely to spread dysgenic genes; measures that someone else decades later would love to extend to another category of throwbacks:
The first of these, stated in its baldest form by McKim, is to kill all persons whose hereditary strain promises bad issue. Under this scheme all defectives and confirmed criminals would be placed in air-tight compartments and be put to death without pain by the introduction of some poisonous, but not unpleasant gas. -...- Another scheme has been proposed by many thoughtful persons: sterilization. Surgery has reached a point where this can be effected painlessly and without danger. It has already been employed, sometimes at the request of the patient, as a hygienic measure; -...- Bad sanitation, imperfect 1874
education, neglect of industrial training, low wages, would still produce their natural crop of criminals, no matter how far these schemes might be carried out. (Henderson 1906:317). Wilson was also a forthright defender of eugenics. As governor of New Jersey--a year before he was sworn in as President--he signed legislation that created, among other things, the Board of Examiners of Feebleminded, Epileptics, and Other Defectives. Under the law, the state could determine when "procreation is inadvisable" for criminals, prisoners, and children living in poorhouses. (Goldberg 2007:146). in the words of one leading historian, “The creation of the gas chamber was a unique invention of Nazi Germany.” In fact, however, the lethal chamber, later called the execution gas chamber or homicidal gas chamber, was originally envisioned before Adolf Hitler was born, and the first such apparatus claimed its initial human victim nine years before the Nazis rose to power and more than sixteen years before they executed anyone by lethal gas. -...-America’s and the world’s first execution by gas arose as a byproduct of chemical warfare research conducted by the U.S. Army’s Chemical Warfare Service and the chemical industry during the First World War. Embraced by both Democrats and Republicans, including many progressives, and touted by both the scientific and legal establishments as a “humane” improvement over hanging and electrocution, the gas chamber was also considered a matter of practical social reform. Its adherents claimed that the gas chamber would kill quickly and painlessly, without the horrors of the noose or the electric chair, and in a much more orderly and peaceful fashion. But they were quickly proven wrong. Technocrats nevertheless kept tinkering with its workings for seventy-five years in a vain attempt to overcome the imperfections of lethal gas. Eventually adopted by eleven states as the official method of execution, lethal gas claimed 594 lives in the United States from 1924 to 1999, until it was gradually replaced by another, supposedly more humane, method of capital punishment, lethal injection (Christianson 2010:13). Germany should be so effectively destroyed that we should not have to fight her again for a hundred years -...- This can probably only be done by sterilization -...- [which is] little more painful than vaccination2359 2359
“ Said Hemingway, in his preface to the impressive collected stories Men at War ($3): "Germany should be so effectively destroyed that we should not have to fight her again for a hundred years, or ... forever. This can probably only be done by sterilization [of] all members of Nazi party organizations." The virile, well-equipped novelist admitted that his suggestion should not be advocated now, as it would provoke "increased resistance"
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It is interesting how the same drastic measures can sort different emotional responses. Wolpe2360 selectively quotes Henderson's reference to execution by poison gas and attributes it to Henderson (incorrectly, as Henderson was summarizing current theses) in a line of thought leading covertly (as Wolpe doesn't mention it directly) to a comparison with mass-murder of civilians by poison gas occurred during WWII.
Readers might recall Lobato's 1926 fictional book O Presidente Negro, whose plot demanded that all U.S Blacks be sterilized. U.S Birth control advocate Margaret Sanger also wanted in 1921 to extend sterilization to those resisting her birth control and atheist agenda on religious grounds, not to mention the “reckless”, “feeble-minded”, “paupers”, “diseased”. The third quotation, however, epitomizes no less than the party line par excellence, as Hemingway heralds germanophobia and advocates the “sterilization [of] all members of Nazi party organizations”, a suggestion that a majority of people might have approved of.
Hemingway himself, an endorser of Castro and a vitriolic propagandist during WWII, is possibly yet another kind of throwback:
Ernest Hemingway harbored bipolar symptoms and committed suicide, as did his father and two siblings. (Polimeni 2012:92). (Social) throwbacks can be identified with different groups according to the shifting goalposts each regime sets, yet with similar real-life consequences: by the would-be victims. But, he pointed out, with an air of self-possession: Sterilization is "little more painful than vaccination." “ (The Year In Books: 1942). 2360 1998: Deviance As Pathology.
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people wearing glasses and/or having learnt a foreign language for the Communist Khmer Rouge; Jews for the NSDAP; a composite jumble of religionists, monarchists and bourgeois for the lefty Jacobins; Acadiens for XVIII century British administration in Canada...the real-life result are the killing fields; the gas chamber; the guillotine or the noyade; the harvesting of scalps...
The entire traveling freak show of racial classification hasn't disappeared as of yet, having barely undergone sanitation in order to align itself – at least in part- with “popular morality”, “free-floating folk beliefs”, “explanations or interpretations usually put forth”,”only an old Phoenician tale of what has often occurred before now in other places”, “prevailing cultural trends”, “the audience’s pre-established set of convictions”.
Professor of psychology Rushton (1994ss) has brought forth a new racial hierarchy that sees Orientals (=Asians) supplant Whites at the top of the tree:
Race differences exist in sexual behavior. The races differ in how often they like to have sexual intercourse. This affects rates of sexually transmitted diseases. On all the counts, Orientals are the least sexually active, Blacks the most, and Whites are in between.-...- IQ tests measure intelligence and predict real life success. The races differ in brain size and on IQ tests. On average Orientals have the largest brains and highest Iqs. Blacks average the lowest, and Whites fall in between. (Rushton 1999:18,22). Wolpe2361 contends that Rushton's theories seem to reflect contemporary economic hierarchies, with Asian countries (China, Korea, Indonesia, Japan...)
2361
1998: Deviance As Pathology.
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increasingly playing first fiddle on the international scene. These possibilities show once again how ethical dilemmas and existential claptrap make sense, if any, only if socio-political conditions are in place.
A shuffling of the deck of Darwinian evolutionary hierarchies may yield all sorts of results. In a 1971 novel (Another Roadside Attraction), writer Tom Robbins argues on Darwinian premises that the final evolutionary showdown will involves cockroaches and gonorrhea, not mankind. Cockroaches and gonorrhea proved to be as tough and resilient as action movie and folklore heroes, the present writer adds.
Robbins' argument can't be explored here, yet Robbins' ideas immediately saturate popular culture. In 1972 the Japanese monster movie Godzilla
Vs. Gigan includes an invading race of outer space aliens who snatch the body of the recently deceased to obtain identities in order to enact their global takeover plan undercover.
In the end, those aliens are revealed to be...cosmic cockroaches: synchronicity indeed. The cockroaches from outer space also plead to bring “perfect peace”,“absolute peace to the whole world”: possibly a nod to Jehovah Witnesses' doctrines of perfect peace with 1975 as (yet another) appointed year for the world's end.
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Bringing apes2362 in to score cheap political points in ale house debates about human groups is likely to have all the 'progressives' and their ilk cry themselves hoarse in distress. What people long on pathetic rhetoric and short on consistency seem to lack is the basic understanding they cannot have their Victorian claptrap both ways: putting god on trial for playing no role, which invites the analogy religions are invariably phony beliefs, while simultaneously pursuing their own equally petty political goals and equally transcendental social alchemy without ricochets only because their armband is of another color.
They cannot both claim that the right-wing appropriation of evolutionism is morally wrong because 'it makes you know who feel bad', and claim that offense taken on religious grounds is nonsense: that's too bad if some fanatics or schizophrenics cannot take the 'scientific' verdict of the microscope -or whichever other gadget- with equanimity.
When all else fails, open the dam of tears invoking emotionally supercharged imagery of slaughter, departure, exclusion and sentimental indignities while an audio clip from Full Metal Jacket plays with the desperate cries of private 'Gomer Pyle' (the overweight recruit) who just got punished during the night for failing to conform to standards.
Of course, when religionists try the same hand, they are laughed offstage 2362
As with most of those pseudo-theological debates, according to a possible wish to pursue either more radical ways, or more appeasing ones, Darwinism could be construed to bring monkeys in as such, or to simply posit an elusive â&#x20AC;&#x153;common ancestryâ&#x20AC;? fit to mean about whatever one wishes.
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along with their barrels of tears, and rows of mortally offended performers gasping for breath in agony. A more balanced approach shall detect third-rate theatrics whenever presented.
So when 'progressive' hecklers and pamphleteers sell
Darwinism mostly -or only- to infuriate fundamentalists, it is nice to know there is another side to the story.
The U.S Council For Secular Humanism defines its activities thus:
To promote secular humanist principles to the public, media, and policy-makers. To provide secular humanist activities and communities to serve the needs of nonreligious people and foster human enrichment. To demonstrate the viability of the secular humanist eupraxsophy as an alternative naturalistic life-stance. To engage in research relating to the critical examination of religious and supernatural claims and the humanist outlook. To conduct educational programs for all age levels ( Summary Information, no page). Only to drop the act and bin the pretense of solomonic equidistance and non-partisanship to deliver a maximalist plea in favor of an agenda as politically tainted as that of groups they so vehemently oppose:
His election reminds us that the United States really is the universal society on this planet and reconfirms Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s identity as a truly (if not yet perfectly) multiracial, multi-ethnic, multicultural nation. The United States is the first major country founded under the ideals of the Enlightenment, committed to the secular values of â&#x20AC;&#x153;life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.â&#x20AC;? America is a land of opportunity and individual achievement; its civic faith in progress, education, science, humanism, and democratic values is well justified. Yet it comes at a price. Almost a century was required to overcome the moral blot of slavery. It has taken another century and a third since the Civil War to make the nation significantly more inclusive. America has elected a biracial president; had the Democratic primaries turned out differently, the nation would most likely have elected a woman. How 1880
long will it take before an open nonbeliever can be elected to high office? The U.S. Constitution states that “no religious test shall ever be required” to hold “any office or public trust.” Yet surveys still show that a majority of Americans would not vote for an atheist candidate for president. Clearly there is more work to be done to realize a truly secular society. (Kurtz&Flynn no date, no page). Using this functional approach, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded in 1961 that secular humanism functions like a religion, so secular humanists merit the same sorts of First Amendment protections that religious practitioners enjoy. In 2005, in a decision that irked atheists and Christians alike, a lower U.S. court held that, because atheism walked and talked like a religion, judges should treat it like one. (Prothero 2010:108). It is old news. In the political life of several countries, it is common occurrence for the main contending parties or candidates to set up a number of satellite rolls (=decoy effect) -or candidates- acting as polemic straw men to 'jam' certain segments of the electorate.
The simulation of greater diversity serves to deflect criticism and/or to maximize results among fringe electoral niches or constituencies the main actor does (or shall) not want to associate itself too closely with in fear of striking a negative balance:”the existence of a less perfect person (-A or -B) push people to choose the perfect one (A or B), simply because the decoy option served as a point of comparison”2363.
To give an example, in Italy for the election of administrative division
Regione Piemonte's assembly no less than 32 allegedly competing rolls were duly registered in 2010, of which 9 to support main right-wing candidate Cota, 12 in 2363
Ariely 2009:23.
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support of main left-wing candidate Bresso, and -astoundingly- 10 in support of third candidate Rabellino, who raked in only 1,67% of votes altogether.
Most of these jamming rolls have identical -or nearly so- designations: 20 out of such 32 rolls score under 1% vote each, apparently. A shower of court cases follows regarding presumed abuses in the registration and operation of such rolls; in 2012, Rabellino receives a 34 month sentence for forgery. Rabellino also loves to present as candidates namesakes of more famous politicians such as “Pericle Berlusconi” (<> Silvio Berlusconi) and “Giuseppe Grillo” (<> Beppe Grillo).
According to the courts2364, the Cota administration would be illegitimate: a verdict challenges the election's results on the ground of “irregularities” on the part of one of the many rolls supporting Cota. The left-wing Chiamparino administration that succeeds Cota is also embroiled in the same “irregularities” that plagued three administrations in a row.
In the 2013 Italian general elections, 27 national rolls compete. A shower of public subsidies targets not only existing registered and active parties, committees and so forth, but also parties (committees etc) that ceased operations years earlier, but are still considered active by a legal or administrative standpoint.
Like Krishna at the Yamuna river, the 'usual suspects' multiply themselves to dance with each electoral segment/ advocacy group in a game of
2364
ANSA, January 10, 2014.
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smoke and mirrors, whereby administrative forgeries, mafioso tactics, paid influencers and community builders jockey for position to influence the befuddled masses under the wishful pretense of a civil society that mostly doesn't even exist:
Consider also the close alliance between an Alzheimerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Society and drug manufacturers, which Chalmers ( 2007 ) argues, encouraged members of this group to promote harmful products. This charity is subsidized by the government in the United Kingdom. It fails to report on its website sources and amounts of revenue it receives from drug companies. Ties between academic researchers, advocacy groups, and pharmaceutical companies is illustrated by funding sources and activities of the American Obesity Association (AOA) founded by Dr. Richard L. Atkinson, an obesity researcher. (Gambrill 2012:71). One company that has created a huge base of endorsers-...specialize[s] in creating word - of - mouth marketing by getting their â&#x20AC;&#x153; agents â&#x20AC;? (you can be one, too) to review and endorse your product or service. Agents earn points by the kinds of endorsements that they give and where. (Lakhani 2008:85-6). The same routine unfolds in all circumstances. When the internet dating fad of the late 1990s boomed to encompass 'exotic' niches -such as the former Soviet block, Asian or Hispanic countries-, awareness of boiler room tactics, confidence trickery and other swindles in the industry soon surfaced.
Due diligence watchdogs speedily started cropping up as alleged 'civil society' response to conmanship. Such watchdogs were in fact either owned or operated -directed or by proxy- by the biggest players in the internet dating industry as a way to both expose their competitors, and/or to present themselves as above suspicion to attract more business.
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Pork-barrel spending and boondoggling are ubiquitous. In September 2013, sources claim a stream of unaccounted for public money is directed from the Italian Senate to a diverse array of unnamed charities, individuals, associations, according to a logic that escapes outsiders. In 2012, a scandal 2365 details how politicians running Italian administrative division Provincia Di Salerno distributed funds to a row of charitable organizations: best of all causes oblige. Such funds were later diverted to finance left-wing President Villani, also detained on grounds of financial wrongdoing in his capacity of entrepreneur.
In October 2013, Italian jumbo publisher Corriere Della Sera requests an emergency financial audit of some of its companies. It appears that a rogue web was in place to (mis)direct unaccounted for funds to a series of unnamed sporting clubs in relation to the running of unnamed sporting events 2366. The same situation recurs at every joint of the command line of Belle Epoque nation-State Moloch: national, regional, provincial, city level.
In the USA debates rages over for-profit educational institutions, whose budget mostly consists in the appropriation of an endless stream of public subsidies from a string of local and national agencies. According to newscasts, such for-profit institutions would often employ rogue boiler room tactics to pander to a series of minorities, and other disadvantaged groups, as main beneficiaries of a shower of public subsidies meant to foster progressive social alchemy, and ensuing oneness. 2365 2366
Trasparenzaelegalita.it, March 22, 2012. Giornale Di Arona, 11 October 2013:8.
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Ink does not cease to flow to detail how certain groups or agendas merely serve as 'civil society front' for this, that or the other economic, maximalist or fundamentalist group, 'great cause' or agenda, whichever it might be. A plethora of national, regional, provincial and city associations, unions, committees, posses, interest and advocacy groups lobby to canalize the stream of public subsidies, often just a facade to hide settlements on account of collusive, nepotistic, mafioso and vote-buying practices.
In Italy in 2014, investigations strike a number of political dignitaries accused to have put a mafioso racket in place 2367 to direct -and profit from- another jumbo endeavor the nanny State put in motion for the common good. The event
Expo 2015 (Universal Exposition) was fed to the Italian masses as a spectacular opportunity to unleash economic prosperity to revive the collapsing economy. It turns out the usual suspects -from all provinces of the political gamut- helped themselves to a whirlwind of public subsidies taxpayers funded. Rogue networks of hijacked public contracts are in place as minions orchestrate remotely controlled political appointments.
French news portal Voici publishes (July 25, 2013) how French taxpayers have paid euro 330.000 (2011) and 80.000 (2012) under laws safeguarding cultural heritage. The money served to run a website - which analysts define as crummy and poorly made- registered under a private foundation in order to publicize former
2367
ANSA, May 9, 2014.
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President Sarkozy's actual wife Carla Bruni. Italian ANSA reports ( July 30, 2013) how Chieti city councilor D'Agostino – from Catholic party UDC- has been restrained under house arrest. He had assertedly blackmailed a number of women: sex in exchange for public housing allocations.
All this set aside, Darwin's ideas – much as the elusive ether of later times2368- were not even original:
Indeed, the Hindus were Spinozists 2,000 years before the birth of Spinoza, Darwinians centuries before the birth of Darwin, and evolutionists centuries before the doctrine of evolution had been accepted by the Huxleys of our time, and before any word like evolution existed in any language of the world. (Monier-Williams in 1894, cit. in Lewis&Hammer 2010:227). This has nothing to do with evolution or Darwin in particular. The same oneness of the pack, homeland first slogans and rally cries recur both in Communist Cuba, Bolivarian Socialist Venezuela, Brazil under military rule (and suchlike cases), and Fascist Italy often verbatim. This tells readers more about human mind's eerie, circular proclivities than about 'bad Mussolini' or 'good Castro', or whichever emotive spin one might want to put on the issue.
Darwin sailed to remote locations to possibly document ideas that had already saturated the intellectual atmosphere 2369. Natural theology (dubbed by some as non-miraculous theology) coming to grips with new ideas and hypotheses in the 2368
Newton had already posited ether as a “fluid” that made the interplay between mind and matter possible as it ran through the nervous system. Newton also described god thus:”Creator and governor of this mechanistic universe, who first created the fermental aether and its principles of action, and then assigned to a lesser power, Nature, the duty of forming and operating the perceptible mechanical universe”. 2369 For a concise overview of evolutionism before Darwin, see Rechtenwald no date.
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realm of geology, paleontology, chemistry etc had already hypothesized â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in the same desperate attempt to salvage an amount of intelligent design and religiosity that later spiritualists would resume- many of the same arguments, namely the merciful rule (and survival of) the fittest already in the first part of the XIX century (Paley's treatise in 1802; the Bridgewater Treatises; Buckland's paleontology and geology, 1809ss etc). In 1809, French scientist Lamarck had conjectured a theory of evolution over long periods that included the passing on of acquired characteristics.
Goldman2370 aptly points out that natural sciences weren't the only weapons used to lay siege to the citadel of conventional Christian thinking centered around the Bible: peaking around mid-XIX century were the decipherments of both Mesopotamian and Egyptian accounts.
The Bible was called into question as possible older alternatives surfaced proposing the same scenery, such as flood and creation myths. Archeological expeditions flourished in a last-ditch attempt to prove (at least some of) the Bible right by identifying places and/or characters associated with Biblical stories, often a perfect excuse clever -though not always pious- archeologists used to raise funds for their expeditions.
The shape of the Earth was another contention that possibly divided the religious and non-religious world. The medieval (Catholic) Church is commonly reputed -according to later standards set by the usual Victorians such as Draper and 2370
2003: Ancient Near Eastern Myths And The Bible.
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White- to enforce the belief the Earth was flat. Nevertheless, Aristotle had given ample demonstrations he posited the Earth to be a sphere. Thomas Aquinas (12251274) wrote in his Summa:
For example, the astronomer and the natural philosopher both demonstrate the same conclusion, such as that the world is round; yet the astronomer does so through mathematics, while the natural philosopher does so in a way that takes matter into account. The treaty of Tordesillas (June 7, 1494) negotiated between Spain and Portugal with the Pope's intervention, divided the realm of colonial influences according to a line set 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands and going from pole to pole, hence positing the Earth as a sphere.
What about â&#x20AC;&#x201C; for example- the Biblical age of the Earth? In 1749 -well before Darwin and the Victorians-, French scientist Buffon had -in a convoluted experiment involving the cooling of iron spheres- conclusively argued the Earth's age to be 75.000 years, not 4.004, 6.000 or whichever other number theologians had derived. Other eminent scientists followed suit, and the Earth's alleged age grew larger; Kelvin in the 1860s estimated an age between 20 and 30 million years.
Even earlier, Catholic clergyman and later blessed Nicolas Steno (163886) -in an example that puts the religious divide into question- had investigated with a scientific outlook issues related to paleontology, geology and stratigraphy. Cynosure of early genetic studies, Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) was an Augustinian friar.
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Theosophists such as Alice Bailey (1880-1949) -in turn voicing age-old esoteric beliefs of Masonic milieus that also recurred in the evolutionary poetry of Charles Darwin's grandfather- relished in savoring an upcoming mixture of catastrophism, lamarckism, theosophy, darwinism, planetary collisions, garrison state and intergalactic mayhem in the service of the actualization of some divine blueprint, giant leap forward or manifest destiny of sort. Benjamin Creme, a follower of Bailey's, keeps the torch burning to enthuse New Age votaries of more recent decades:
let us never forget that its the Life, its purpose and its directed intentional destiny thats of importance; and also that when a form proves inadequate, or too diseased or to crippled for the expression of that purpose, it is - from the point of view of the Hierarchy - no disaster when that form has to go. Death is not a disaster to be feared; the work of the Destroyer is not really cruel or undesirable (Bailey 1954:112). Behind the scientistic references to e.g. an ascension to higher and higher “dimensions”, one finds a cosmology similar to the belief in a coming evolutionary leap for mankind that is typical of many texts of the New Age sensu stricto, but with a more apocalyptic tone than many other channeled texts. It can be hinted that only a minority of people will be spiritually advanced enough to participate in the Ascension, whereas the rest of the world is doomed to cataclysmic changes. There are claims that the less spiritually evolved majority is duped by a conspiracy instigated by the government, the media and major organizations. (Hammer 2004:400-1). Darwin was not generally remiss in giving intellectual credit. He was selectively remiss. As one biographer wrote, “generous though Darwin always was to those whose empirical observations he found useful, he barely acknowledged those whose ideas had influenced him.”What a useful pattern. Darwin lavished credit on scores of minor-league researchers, while diminishing the few predecessors who might have been even remote contenders for his crown; he thus incurred the debt of many young, rising scientists, while risking the offense mainly of 1889
the old and the dead. All in all, a fairly sound formula for high status. (Wright 1994:191). As this writer contends, it all came as direct filiation from Belle Epoque scientistic fads:
[University professor of physics and mathematics] Lodgeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s extnote religiophilosophical viewpoint, elaborated in a formidable publishing campaign beginning in the late 1890s, took the midcentury idioms of biological evolution, scientific humanism, and evangelical Christianity, and crossed them to produce a new language blending moral, spiritual, and material progress into a vaguely Christian metamaterial evolutionism, strongly dosed with contemporary discourses coming out of experimental psychology. -...- â&#x20AC;&#x153;The crisisâ&#x20AC;? was no longer a problem of canonical theology in conflict with science, but rather a conflict within the canons of science itself, to be solved by scientists through a disciplinewide reevaluation of the mindmatter relationship, as facilitated by psychical research. ( Grean Raia 2007:3940). But in 1909, wary of all the free-form healing this electromania encouraged, the government issued the Flexner Report, which sought to upgrade and standardize medical education and health care throughout the country. Besides condemning the popular and efficacious practice of homeopathy and institutionalizing the AMA's arrogant reign of allopathic medicine, the report declared that electrical potentials and magnetic energies played no vital role in physiology or biomedicine. The animal soul, which had long surfed the waves of the electromagnetic imaginary, was repressed by mainstream American medicine. (Davis 1999:53). Of course, although advocates claim so, the biggest issue isn't a strictly technical one (=the mathematical or genetic aspects of evolution and heredity; the survival of the fittest; the exact age of a certain fossil...), but a political one. There may have thus been other eminent authors -such as Lamarck and Bucklandextnote
A scientist who -according to some accounts- might have (for some: ought to have) replaced both Hertz and Marconi as herald of the new era in electromagnetic research -hence wireless telegraphy, radio and so forth-. Hertz and Marconi, however, went public -or secured patents- first regarding notable discoveries. (note of this writer).
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pushing the idea of evolution, rule of the fittest etc, yet Darwinian theories lent themselves especially well to the political agenda of evicting the supernatural from the world of science.
The same may be hypothesized about Adolf Bastian (1826-1905) and his anticipation of concepts such as the psychic unity of mankind decades before Jung offered similar suggestions. Marks offers us a suitable explanation as to why Bastian's voluminous and erudite work remains unknown to the contemporary reader (only an insignificant fraction of Bastian's works 2371 is available to the general public in languages other than the original German):
Bastian’s opposition to evolution was widely known -...-. Andre Gingrich frames it in terms of political abstractions: ‘‘It seems that the reasons for the antievolutionist orientation of German anthropology, so closely connected to state and crown, were distributed among three factors: Protestant pietism tended to reject an anticreationist theory of the origin of species and of humanity; Prussian nationalism displayed deep skepticism toward a new theory from rival Britain; and imperial hegemony provoked profound distrust of a theory that largely inspired Marx and Engels, the leading thinkers of the German labor movement. . ..’’. -...- How was the human species constituted and, consequently, how was the scholarly, scientific study of human diversity to proceed? The answer seemed to lie with a methodological principle of Adolf Bastian’s, ‘‘the psychic unity of mankind.’’ This is where the literature in English pretty much dries up, but it is basically a foundational moment for anthropology (2010:223). What about Bastian's objections? Did they anticipate a critique of later social Darwinism? If so, Social Darwinism was patently inherent in Darwinism and not -as Darwinian enthusiasts argue- a tragic, haphazard misinterpretation at the 2371
A search for “Adolf Bastian” (in the abstract) in the popular Proquest, dissertations and theses databases in December 2012 returned only one relevant result, which had nothing to do with Bastian's work and ideas.
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usual suspects' hands.
It was relatively easy for people like Ratzel and Haeckel—both trained scientists and, at that time, materialists and radicals—to see a link between their enthusiastic advocacy of Darwinism and their desire for political reform. Other liberals, however, some scientifically qualified and at least nominally radical, refused to accept Darwinism in the way Haeckel and Ratzel did. These included Adolf Bastian and, most notably, Rudolf Virchow [in the 1870s]. -...-On the anti-Darwin side, Virchow was deeply disturbed about the danger of extending the Darwinian model beyond the question of natural species change to encompass human society—precisely the thing that pushy young scientists like Haeckel and Ratzel did so readily. In the absence of a convincing empirical demonstration of the biological reality of natural selection, which Virchow claimed not to see, and without a clear causal link between species change and social phenomena, against which Virchow [who had in 1848 written:”Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale. ”], as a physical anthropologist, said the evidence was strong, the application of natural selection to society could only be regarded as a source of loose, suggestive analogies. There was nothing inherently wrong with this, but Virchow and others correctly foresaw that, when transferred into the sphere of social science and thus of politics, the looseness of the analogies would be forgotten. The almost-infinite flexibility of Darwin's theoretical categories would allow many different, often obnoxious, political ideologies to clothe themselves in the garb of science. (Smith 1991:92, emphasis added). Even in the beginning, Darwin's theories were used as a gauntlet thrown between self-important social alchemists jousting on the opposite sides of eminently political divides, as the debate between Bishop Wilberforce and biologist Huxley (who popularized the word agnosticism) demonstrated.
U.S transcendentalist Conway, a liberal and abolitionist who took pride in his radicalism in spite of his birth in an aristocratic Southern family of slaveholders, went on a pilgrimage to see Darwin. What could the expectations of a
1892
radical social activist and (former) Unitarian pastor 2372 possibly be? Conway wrote in his 1904 biography:
I was soon with Darwin in the garden, which was in floral glory. He expressed satisfaction that I had been able to derive from evolution the hopeful religion set forth in my discourse, but I remember that he did not express agreement with it. (no page). Marx himself wrote in 1860 about Darwin's Natural Selection that “this is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our views”. Engels, Liebknecht (co-founder of German revolutionary left-wing party Spartacist League) and other left-wing revolutionists were avid supporters of both Darwin, and Darwinists such as Huxley.
Dutch Marxist revolutionist Pannekoek wrote in 1909:
At a congress of naturalists, the reactionary politician and scientist Virchow assailed the Darwinian theory on the ground that it supported Socialism. “Be careful of this theory,” he said to the Darwinists, “for this theory is very nearly related to the theory that caused so much dread in our neighboring country.” This allusion to the Paris Commune, made in the year famous for the hunting of Socialists, must have had a great effect. What shall be said, however, about the science of a professor who attacks Darwinism with the argument that it is not correct because it is dangerous! This reproach, of being in league with the red revolutionists, caused a lot of annoyance to Haeckel, the defendant of this theory. He could not stand it. Immediately afterwards he tried to demonstrate that it is just the Darwinian theory that shows the untenableness of the Socialist demands, and that Darwinism and Socialism “endure each other as fire and water.” (1912:no page).
2372
Ordained in 1855. In 1856 the congregation voted his dismissal. After stirring troubles regularly up elsewhere with his progressive campaigns, he left ministry in 1862.
1893
It is crucial to emphasize how the divide didn't segregate scientists as a monolithic
category
from religionists, spiritualists or laymen; it wasn't a
gigantomachy opposing experimental or exact science to the humanities: highly credentialed scientists were present on both sides. The divide, however, ended up segregating in a gigantomachy -still ongoing to this day- a composite cohort of radicals and atheists in their militant, political crusade from an equally composite cohort of religionists, spiritualists, theosophists, irrespective of the field of one's university degree.
Furthermore, even this divide wasn't vacuum-packed, but made room for unusual commingling on the fringe still ongoing to this day:
Even Lammert’s considerable influence could not stop the majority of creationist writers from joining Marsh and Morris in calling for extensive postdiluvian evolution. By the late 1950s, such Young-Earth creationists were beginning openly to accept microevolution (evolution within kinds) as opposed to macroevolution (evolution above the level of kinds), terms coined by the Russian geneticist Iurii Filipchenko (1882–1930) in 1927 and introduced to the Englishspeaking world by his most famous student, Dobzhansky. As one Young Earther proclaimed in 1959, “the creationist can find room for microevolution or variation, but refuses to accept macroevolution, on the grounds that it is unscriptural as well as unproved in any form.” By the 1990s, microevolution and natural selection had become standard features of Young-Earth creationism. When the Alabama State Board of Education in 1995 required that state-approved biology textbooks carry a pasted-in “message” warning of the controversial nature of evolution, it carefully distinguished between microevolution, “which can be observed and described as fact,” and macroevolution, such as the development of birds from reptiles, which “has never been observed and should be considered a theory.” Despite the popular image of creationists being wedded to the fixity of species, no one argued for more rapid speciation by means of natural selection that those notorious Darwinian heretics, the creationists 1894
(Numbers in Lustig et alii 2004:100). It is -once again- the scene of the proponent of UFO/paranormal doom trying to buttress his theories with fancy scientific ideas and mesmerizing jargon, whereby the scoring of 'political' points to play the gallery matters more than poorly digested hi-tech concepts. The same can be applied to the worship of Galileo Galilei. There are issues with the reliability of Galileo's telescopic observations and -while he certainly got some things right-, “Galileo (1564-1642) proposed that the rotations of the earth, annually around the sun and daily about its own axis, induced motions of the sea which were modified by the shape of the sea-bed to give the tides. ”2373: an unsound theory as we very well know.
Galileo also championed (sort of) Aristotelian views regarding comets as optical illusions (the 1577 Great Comet controversy), possibly as a way to settle petty scores:
His attitude about comets seems to have been determined by his annoyance with a jesuit, Father Grassi, who had expressed the correct view that comets move in orbits, like planets. (Lovell 1981:83). A good example is provided by meteorites. Eighteenth-century English and French scientists rejected the ample testimony as to the reality of meteorites, as we reject stories of alien abduction. On 13 September 1768 a large meteorite, weighing seven and a half pounds, fell at Lucé, Pays de la Loire. Numerous people (all of them peasants) saw it fall. Three members of the Royal Academy of Sciences (including the young Lavoisier) were sent to investigate. They concluded that lightning had struck a lump of sandstone on the ground; the idea of rocks falling from outer 2373
Pugh 1987:3. Tides do not depend on the Earth's rotation.
1895
space was simply ridiculous. There are other similar cases. (Wootton 2015:183). Galileo, as arrogant and defiant2374 as any action movie hero, was, in turn, heavily indebted to a row of medieval sages (so-called XIV century “Oxford calculators”) having mathematically probed the issues of uniform motion and mean speed. “Calculators” in turn reacted to XII century theological disputes about the amount -and possible increase- of grace and charity.
Einstein, too, first thought the universe to be static:
The most banal reason for Einstein's blunder might have been a simple failure to think through the consequences of his own ideas (in itself, very unusual for Einstein, but he was mentally and physically exhausted at this time). -...-It is surprising that Einstein was so convinced that the universe was unchanging. -...-But really, this won't do. Blunder it was, but one far too minor to matter much to a towering figure like Einstein. It is the sort of bourgeois mistake that might be appropriate for a Bohr, but Einstein is too sophisticated, too heroic, to make his defining error a missed opportunity that would have hardly changed his reputation. Heroes need tragic flaws which lead to their downfall, and yet are so much part of their make-up that without the flaw, they would not have been heroes. Now, it is not easy to paint Einstein's life as a tragedy. He lived long, died famous and respected throughout the world, was held in affection by all who knew him, and gave every indication of having enjoyed the whole business. Nevertheless, if it was no tragedy for Einstein, it was certainly a tragedy for physics that for the last twenty-five years of his life he was estranged from the active research community by his doubts about quantum mechanics. (Leahy2375 2001: no page). Haven't readers here gotten yet another pseudo-mythology awash in 2374
He obtained an assent to publish his theories by his personal friend the Pope under the condition he put a sort of disclaimer to register Pope Barberini's objections. Galileo complied, yet put the objection in the mouth of a fictional character called Simplicio (=the simpleton), and responded to it with sarcasm. Hardly a good publishing strategy. 2375 Billed as “senior lecturer in Radio Astronomy in the University of Manchester”. It is important to note these concepts come from a scientist in the field, and not just from another journalist, or a scholastic academic.
1896
sentimentalism, commodious licenses and emotional truth? Naturally, Darwin- or Einstein-worship is best explained not only through a few politicking hecklers' staunch advocacy, or the dogmatic support of academia, but through the complete ignorance of the intellectual climate Darwin or Einstein operated in, which is also true in the case of Marx, Freud and other totem figures.
Dawkins announces that science replaces individual prejudices with publicly verifiable facts; he accidentally omits to mention -for the sake of scientific rigor he often invokes- the various hoaxes, frauds and scares members of the scientific community fostered over the decades, from the Piltdown Man down to cold fusion and a string of “flu pandemics”.
French Le Monde details on January 4, 2010 how “for prevention's sake facing a virus of unforeseeable damage potential”, the French government had 'invested' amounts (about euro 2 billion) equal to the cumulative deficit of all public hospitals, or three times the amount allocated for the “cancer plan”:
Un milliard et demi d'euros, c'est le coût de la campagne anti-grippe A. Sur son blog, le médecin et député socialiste de Paris Jean-Marie Le Guen s'en fait l'écho. La somme semble démesurée pour une campagne qui tourne à la déroute : seulement 4,5 millions de Français ont été vaccinés, le pic pandémique est passé, et le ministère de la santé se retrouve à stocker des dizaines de millions de vaccins dont la date de péremption approche. "Un échec", estime l'élu parisien, qui réclame la création d'une mission parlementaire pour faire le bilan de l'opération. -...- L'Etat français a commandé 94 millions de vaccins "pour un montant de 869 millions d'euros", selon le ministère de la santé. Quatre laboratoires se sont partagé le marché hexagonal : le britannique GlaxoSmithKline a vendu à la France 50 millions de doses, le français Sanofi-Pasteur 28 millions, le suisse Novartis 16 millions et 1897
l'américain Baxter 50 000. Des dépenses faites au nom du principe de précaution, explique-t-on au gouvernement. Le ministère de la santé souligne toujours que l'évolution du virus est "imprévisible". -...- note Bernard Debré. Le plan anti-grippe A a coûté "plus que le déficit cumulé de tous les hôpitaux publics ou trois fois la somme allouée au plan cancer", souligne encore le député UMP de Paris. (Nunes 2010: no page). A vaudeville of alarmist declarations and counter-declarations causes trillionaire market losses ricocheting on the taxpayer while members of supposedly non-existent inner circles following imaginary strategies reap profits anticipating the 'unforeseeable' twist. It is not just a matter of individual sensitivity: these scares cost(ed) taxpayers a deluge of billions worldwide: that is what pressing the contamination, regret and Cassandra 'buttons of the mind' can achieve.
Alternatively, Dawkins could have denounced gross incompetence lurking behind several glamorous failures or 'glitches' in space exploration:
1. The Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft was lost because supremely credentialed scientists mixed up metric and imperial measure units.
2. Because of a 'human mistake', the Cassini-Huygens space probe could transmit to Earth only about half of the data gathered.
3. Because of human and construction error, the mirror of space telescope Hubble (1,5 billion project) resulted flawed, thus drastically impacting the quality of the data sent back. Refurbishment had to take place in space at a later time to fix the problem. 1898
4. In August 2014, a euro 100 million launch of a new breed of â&#x20AC;&#x153;European GPS satellitesâ&#x20AC;? Galileo ( ESA machinery launched with a Russian vector) ends in failure as the satellites are positioned in the wrong orbit: reasons are this far unknown.
Dawkins might have also mentioned countless pharmaceutical scandals that range from dangerous drugs not being withdrawn to kickbacks passed on to the medical community and/or regulators to prescribe, promote or alternatively demote any given drug or treatment. Among many such scandals, the site Varese News (Italy) reports on May 11, 20122376 how pharmaceutical giant Sandoz-Novartis would purportedly pass undercover or unofficial monies and benefits (such as travels) to physicians operating within both the private and public health sector in order to prescribe growth hormone products, often associated with doping practices.
Is there a method to the madness? Perhaps Paolo Macchiarini's 2377 case might prove instructive. Hailed by the New York Times and acclaimed the world over, the thoracic surgeon has been arrested in 2012 under the hypothesis of purportedly manipulating terminally/severely ill patients into subscribing -for princely fees to his advantage- to treatments and surgeries of dubious clinical outcome.
Still in 2012, nine cardiologists â&#x20AC;&#x201C; including people of international renown- working with prestigious Policlinico di Modena (Italy) have been arrested. 2376 2377
Soldi Ai Medici...2012: no page. Arrestato Il Superchirurgo...2012: no page.
1899
68 physicians and 12 biomedical companies are purportedly involved in a rogue web of fraud, unethical conduct, and unauthorized medical experiments upon unaware patients; princely kickbacks were also routed through a series of unauthorized charities2378.
By happenstance during a medical exam, a cancer patient discovers that one year earlier the “wrong rib” had been surgically removed at renowned temple of science Istituto Dei Tumori (Milan). Investigations are underway, yet all evidence and records have mysteriously “disappeared”2379.
The Dervishes of science with a stethoscope whirling in their white-aspurity coats rival with the priests of conventional Catholic Church in matters of cover-ups: lefties, atheists, progressives and their lot remain respectfully silent making allowances that are as ample and frequent as it is required to keep the magic show from collapsing in a farce.
Just as Catholics might say, the Church remains an infallible emanation of the one true god no matter how many clergymen are caught committing misconduct, whether sexual, financial or otherwise. No matter how many scientists are caught fabricating evidence, botching projects through ineptitude or being defective in any way, science remains the infallible emanation of some underlying cosmic principle.
2378 2379
Policlinico Di Modena...2012: no page. TgCom24, March 19, 2014.
1900
Christian apologist A. McFarland in an interview in 2011 expounds how a militant Christian sees things: all the Christians in the world may let one down, whereas Jesus will never let one down. The elementary idea, the gist, always steals the day, whereas the ethnic idea, the concrete manifestation, may be discarded at any time.
The Khmer Rouge, the NSDAP and the Soviet regimes might have proven historically to be failures awash in the blood of the innocent. Homeland first slogans, Communism (however re-branded) etc always drive crowds. In other words, free trade, immigration amnesty, homeland first etc can never let anyone down. As Boothman2380 would have it, â&#x20AC;&#x153;people one likes can do no wrongâ&#x20AC;?.
1986 No Retreat No Surrender represents a third-rate copycat of Karate
Kid. Acting is mediocre at best, directing is sloppy, and filming equipment is visible on the scene (mats, microphones etc). Nevertheless, an anonymous reviewer posted online that the story in the movie helped him/her to avoid committing suicide for personal reasons.
a lot of the people who write these stories do not have the sense of their responsibility. These stories are making and breaking lives. But the movies are made simply to make money. The kind of responsibility that goes into a priesthood with a ritual is not there. (Campbell&Moyers 1991:72). We tell myths to the beat of an African djembe drum. Drumming cultivates a sense of community, collaboration, oneness, and sacred space. .-...-As participants ingest the traits of the mythâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heroes, 2380
2004.
1901
they incorporate the lessons and common themes embedded in these ancient tales into their psyche, a transformative process encouraging them to become the hero in their own stories. Common themes include: self-sacrifice; humility; perseverance; patience; asking for assistance; utilizing resources; overcoming obstacles; doing good deeds; betrayal; suffering; journeys; forgiveness; decision making; hope, courage; sorrow; passion; love; friendship; integrity. (Scruggs2381 2017:no page). Superlative psychoanalyst Otto Rank (1884-1939) self-identified with fictional Huckleberry Finn: he admired Finn's creativity, strong will and confident impulsivity. Rank even adopted the nickname of – and signed himself as in letters to friends- “Huck”. Rank also changed his original Jewish name (Rosenfeld) into Rank, one of Ibsen's characters: he converted to Catholicism to facilitate such legal name change.
2011 Finding Joe documentary sees interviews with “follow your bliss” votaries interspersed with significant quotes from Joseph Campbell's work as images from the Matrix, Batman, Harry Potter, Rocky, Lord Of The Rings movies roll epitomizing Campbell's rendition of myth's high points. “Following one's bliss” shall grant one the kind of career that the distinguished speakers epitomize: Oscar winners; millionaire NGO moguls; pop-culture icons...:
I won’t go on with the Harry Potter metaphor because I’m sure there’s one or two of you out there who haven’t had the chance to read the books or see the films, but I have to say that J. K. Rowling’s incredible imagination has made teaching shame a lot easier and way more fun. The allegorical power of Harry Potter lends itself to talking about everything from the struggle between light and dark to the hero’s journey and why vulnerability and 2381
Afro-American activist who works with at-risk youth of color.
1902
love are the truest marks of courage. Having spent so long trying to describe and define unnamed emotions and experiences, I find that Harry Potter has given me a treasure trove of characters, monsters, and images to use in my teaching. For that, I’ll be forever grateful. (Brown 2012:45). People letting one down are everywhere. Some promise twenty percent return on investment, or an Oscar, whereas others prefer a different path:
An Iowa State University professor resigned after admitting he falsely claimed rabbit blood could be turned into a vaccine for the AIDS virus. Dr. Dong-Pyou Han spiked a clinical test sample with healthy human blood to make it appear that the rabbit serum produced diseasefighting antibodies, officials said. The bogus findings helped Han’s team obtain $19 million in research grants from the National Institutes of Health, said James Bradac, who oversees the institutes’ AIDS research. (Soltis 2013: no page). In Italy in 2,5 years (2009-2011), 470 cases of medical malpractice were so serious to warrant investigation by a parliamentary commission. In 329 of these cases, the patient had died2382. In 2017, professor Fanelli, a pain management luminary, is arrested in Italy. A rogue racket was in place between physicians, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to foster sham pain management protocols in exchange for princely kickbacks in the hundreds of thousands of euros:”we write whatever we want, and everybody follows us”2383 bragged the eminent physician who reveled in luxury good shell companies provided. In 2017 again, hip replacement parts known to be faulty are nonetheless implanted through a rogue racket that included colluding Italian orthopaedic surgeons, clinics and generalist physicians who received hefty tokens of gratitude 2384. Would Dawkins consider the Malasanità...2011: no page. “Noi scriviamo una roba e tutti vengono dietro a noi”, Corriere Della Sera, May 9, 2017. 2384 ANSA, September 14, 2017. 2382 2383
1903
above as “irrational health services” perhaps?
It is understandable how any “Darwin's Rottweiler” may not want to be within hearing, speaking or seeing distance from such issues: so much about matters of bad faith usually brought up with religionists and their ilk. Should a valiant Catholic ruminate over the hundreds of children killed in Irish Catholic orphanages, or indulge a fantasy of history being in the making as Pope Francis I kisses feet, plays with parrots, puts on a red nose or utilizes a port-a-potty?
It won't elude readers how the canine connection links back to medieval inquisition, originally a prerogative of the Dominican order. Domini Cani (hounds of the lord)
was how popular culture appropriated the item of the ruthless
Dominican zeal for Catholic orthodoxy. “That historian or scholar who delights in pointing out the weaknesses and frailties of present or past leaders destroys faith. A destroyer of faith -...- is serving the wrong master, -...- Do not spread disease germs!”: opposites couldn't possibly overlap more. Naturally, whether Woody Woodpecker's scornful laughter is to be heard, or Luke Skywalker's participatory howling, depends on the human mind's fleeting proclivities.
Whatever fault might be there could be resolved with transgressors being just the very occasional rotten apples, common humanity fellows, 'daddies of three/mommies of two' who deserve a big bear-hug in non-dualistic rapture, not stones cast at them. Didn't fairy tales forewarn against rash acts and hasty judgments? Beautiful souls do not push their artificial kin group fellows over the 1904
brink to later repent.
The transgressor's mistakes reveal the flimsy and unaccountable nature of the delightful human nature that is ours, too. That is why precious savior-heroes routinely materialize on the earthly plane to save the brutish masses essentially from themselves: the heart of darkness, or the Zoroastrian dilemma between absolute good and evil2385.
Of course, much as bogus alternative healers profit from people's “superstition”, so do pharmaceutical companies and the policy makers they fund and influence with people's “reason”: Bernays knew that well when he had 'studies' custom-tailored to support his campaigns. Bernays might have perfected what was common currency.
Before Bernays' birth, in the 1880s the debate raged over which electrification standard (AC or DC) should prevail. Giant financial interests were at stake (Edison championed DC; Westinghouse and Tesla were behind AC): some H. Brown performed public experiments to show how dangerous AC was by electrocuting dogs. Brown is also credited with 'inventing' the electric chair to accommodate the need for a more compassionate method of executing criminals.
Electricity could be interpreted -by Lanz Von Liebenfels for example- as a mystical fluid, the Holy Grail's secret, that made possible the paranormal powers 2385
Critics still muse to what extent Conrad was possibly indebted to Nietzsche in his borrowing of the Zoroastrian concept; of course, Nietzsche, too, was possibly just reacting to XIX century oriental thought fads or 'awakenings'.
1905
of long-lost pure-breed Aryans. In the Belle Epoque, French-Canadian doctor Hercules Sanche patented devices -such as Oxydonor2386- to treat all sorts of bodily ills and imbalances. Sanche argued how “most diseases, and especially those of a nervous character, are due to disturbances in the electrical equilibrium of the body”2387.
As it would be the case with poison gas, new scientific discoveries are instantly applied to penology:
For Southwick had just presented Edison with a possible solution to his own most vexing problem, the competition posed by Westinghouse and his alternating-current electrical systems. If Edison could establish in the public mind the perception that Westinghouse’s alternating current system was dangerous to use, and hardly something one would want to introduce into one’s home, while his own direct current system was safe as could be, he stood to gain the upper hand in the emerging competition to electrify the country. And what better proof could there be than the decision by the State of New York to employ alternating current to kill? Like many subsequent campaigns, this one was constructed on a body of belief and expectation that was already established in the public mind, and sought to position the protagonist—in this case, Mr. Edison— squarely atop the moral high ground, even as he moved to gain a tangible advantage. (Manheim 2011:7-8). Edison's financial interests were evidently at work through Brown and his allegedly disinterested campaign in the name of higher goods, although the AC standard would triumph in the long run due to technical superiority.
2386
Some sources claim the production cost for Oxydonor was 1,5US$: it sold for 35$ ( about US$900 in today's money according to some sources) via mail-order catalogues in the 1890s. As legal actions started to target this kind of quackery, Sanche moved his headquarters several times to avoid conviction. 2387 U.S Patent n. 587237A, July 27, 1897. https://patents.google.com/patent/US587237
1906
As with other hoaxers, the best explanation might be that the disaster didn't strike this time, but has in the past, might have just now, and probably will in the future, which is sinisterly similar to what the proponent of UFO or paranormal doom propose. Extraterrestrials haven't taken our world over completely as of yet, and will indeed if no immediate action is taken as they did in the circular
achronotopos of the watchers (a kind of biblical angel, iyrin2388), nephilim and anunnaki; of course, the prophets of UFO/paranormal doom are ignored and/or ridiculed.
The achronotopos reveals its own circular nature: much as a '...ist' lurks under any stone left unturned, and will storm the town if the new 'special law' is not enacted right now, extraterrestrials have been constantly busy interfering, interbreeding etc with humans during the last eleven hundred, fifteen thousand, eight billion years.
Parties with vested interests or stakes in the space exploration fad keep fueling hopes of imminent manned outer space bases, manned trips to the solar system's outer reaches, Terra-forming on planet Mars etc. Even sparse knowledge allows to ponder how those are just lunatic impossibilities destined to remain such for eons -and not just a decade or two- to come.
Assuming that they could heat Mars up in a few years, and make the 2388
“And because the king saw a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven and saying, ‘Chop down the tree and destroy it, but leave the stump of its roots in the earth, bound with a band of iron and bronze, in the tender grass of the field, and let him be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts of the field, till seven periods of time pass over him,’” (Daniel 4:23).
1907
atmosphere safe, how would they resolve the problem of gravity, and of the unhindered shower of lethal solar radiations?
This is not pseudo-scientific
gibberish, but sparse knowledge easily gathered through a few Discovery Channel documentaries and introductory university courses.
Even the so-called Y2K bug still found its champions well after the entire thing was shown to be a hoax -along with DNS CHANGER and other I.T scares- engineered with the sole purpose of extracting some money from gullible clients. On February 1, 2000, a â&#x20AC;&#x153;networking analyst for Information Systems and Services in Roanoke. â&#x20AC;&#x153; wrote in the aptly apocalyptic tone of any UFO or '...ist' sensational piece:
As one who worked several six- and sometimes seven-day weeks on this problem, I am disappointed that you have chosen to treat the fact that disaster did not happen as if it were a demonstration that the whole thing was one big false alarm. The day you published your front-page headline about Y2K having had no sting, a colleague at Information Systems and Services was told by a client that that the whole thing was a hoax -- after we had spent several long days saving this client from ruin. The hero's journey...
The columnist, Denis Horgan of The Hartford (Conn.) Courant, clearly wanted to do a little geek-bashing, so any explanation made to him would be a waste of time. Mystical apprehension mounts as the possessor of esoteric knowledge cannot possibly be bothered to explain the intricacies of UFO and '...ist conspiracy' schemes to the clueless. 1908
The clueless, however, are advised to retain the so-called expert's services...
(1) It is very serious. There is broad agreement among knowledgeable people that Y2K is a threat. -...-But I do not know a single expert in the field who thinks Y2K is anything less than a problem that must be fixed to avoid serious harm. No 'serious scholar' (expert, whatever) would do that: it ensues either one is serious (but not a scholar), or a scholar (but not serious) to 'connect the dots' against the (academic) grain.
The latter situation existed in the early part of my career. Multiplied over the large number of machines and programs in which it existed, using two-digit dates saved millions of dollars. The 'good guys' always do what's good or reasonable...a physician might have a Greek term here for better effect.
There is a well-funded, 40-year-old company here in Roanoke that did nothing to prepare for Y2K. We learned of this at ISS when its representative showed up at our offices with an urgent interest in retaining our services on the morning of Jan. 3. Anyone who does not believe the threat was real and substantial would get an education from talking to the folks there. (DeLong: no page). Science (as ideology not as critical appraisal) is a key grand narrative appealed to in the creation of bogus diseases and risks both in professional sources and the media. Scientific sounding terms are used including jargon in the DSM that sounds impressive such as “factitious disorder by proxy,” “dyspareunia,” and “social anxiety disorder.” More and more “interiors” (thoughts and feelings) - even vaginas – are promoted as “not normal.” (Gambrill 2012:161). Third parties may be specifically commissioned to herald the thunder of
1909
illumination. There is something terribly crucial they have seen, read, heard, witnessed; you have to hear about right now, and that shall change your opinion entirely...
Make the effort in your conversations with other people to "talk in color" by painting word pictures. Describe your experiences vividly so other people can "see" them (Boothman 2000:140). The same theatrics can be deployed to fit any and all circumstances. Perhaps it's 'the big chill', the implosion of the euro zone, the Y2K bug, Mexican flu, '...ists' marching onto town that begs for immediate clampdown lest people repent at leisure:”If something is easy, there’s no tension, and without tension, there’s little incentive for an audience to keep watching.”.
The privilege to summon the omnipotent nation-State Moloch in defense of its last retainers may also shift from 'approved' hierophants on primetime TV to maladjusted pranksters “swatting” someone as they dial emergency numbers telling false stories that seem lifted from cable TV movies about murderous sociopaths on a killing spree so that security forces may descend upon their victim in full force.
Alternatively, spammers may be taking over the internet. Such was the fad all the rage around the year 2000 that saw 'the internet bubble' burst. Spammers (the quintessential evil trickster in another disguise) were many, and had a 'master plan' to take over the internet, a proxy for the world. One of them was some Sal Varsan who wrote an extremely rude letter to the meek party liner who had 1910
complained, promising to blast the opponent's email with loads of spam.
Sal added:
Obviously, your thinking "How did these people get my REAL e-mail address and not my "bait" address? I tell you. Hmmmm... let's see. Maybe it was a mole in the upstream provider somewhere -...-. For them to seriously consider your belly-acheing your going to have to give them are a "real" person at Earthlink, Mindsping, AOL, or the like address. We know that and you know that. So, when one of our secret members get that one, they pass it to us -...- We'll kill that one too! Ain't it a bitch to think the very people you may be complaining to could very well be "ratting you out" to us? -...- Look at reality, you are the SAME fucking creeps that bitched about "NO Commercialization of the Internet' in the early 90's. What good did it do? Nada, Zilch, Zero. Do you think the minds on Madison Avenue don't realize that awesome potential of bulk e-mail advertising? [sic]2389 War propaganda operates precisely on the same basis: there's a potential enemy lurking under every stone left unturned. Enemies are organized, well-funded (Sal bragged about making US$4.500 an hour), and network with fifth-columnists, traitors, profiteers and anti-nationals to take the world over. Theirs is the 'unholy covenant', the 'satanic trade-off' of medieval sorcery cases that represents the antithesis and negation of the mystical body of the faithful functioning as one.
Soon the letter by fictional Sal Varsan, of which dozens of copies were reported on various sites by hypothetical victims of retaliation spreading faster than avian flu, took up definite political connotations.
Sal thus became an agent of a notorious right- or left-wing cabal
2389
Posted in various newsgroups in the year 2000 and after.
1911
enacting the famous 'master plan' so talked about in the 1920-30s slanted to appeal to a burgeoning e-culture. As anti-nationals, traitors and fifth-columnists do, Varsan hid behind a noble facade: the free speech society. In very recent years, such might be the case with alleged Islamofascist cabals trying to infiltrate western society from many angles operating behind noble facades: Islamic cultural centres; meek boatpeople who desperately cross over to avoid slaughter or famine...
Much as in war propaganda's case, the solution is immediate clampdown the masses should acquiesce to in the name of the higher good. Of course, the emphasis is on the the masses' visceral reaction that kept fictional Sal's letter alive and regularly resurfacing for several years.
Is it pure coincidence that Sal Varsan (or Salvarsan) was an arsenic compound a German Nobel laureate had discovered in 1909 in order to kill the organism that caused syphilis? That was of no consequence for people who loved 'the moral of the story' behind an arrogant spam-ring leader and his 'impure' allegiances being outed for trying to take over the internet, thus once again giving a body to ever present evil syndicates of malicious tricksters.
The Azande tribes of Central Africa do not seemingly believe in random events. If someone sits under a hut, and the hut accidentally collapses causing damage, it must be because someone of ill-will caused an evil magical intervention. The 1933 Reichstag fire, which caused newly elected Chancellor Hitler to enact repressive measures and 'special laws', is considered by many a NSDAP insider's job 1912
in spite of seemingly acknowledged connections to Communist operatives.
When Jimmy Guieu died, a furphy flared up that was similar to what was rumored about Bruce Lee, John Lennon and Marilyn Monroe. Secret service operatives and outer space cabals would have poisoned the French ufologist and conspiracy theorist to silence him, who died of prostate cancer at age 73: if the shoe fits...
When the so-called 9-11 is concerned, the opposite applies:
The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror , published in Paris in August 1933, was more than a book. It was a staged event and the center of an international campaign that convinced much of the world that the Nazis had conspired to burn the Reichstag as the pretext to establishing a dictatorship. The campaign around the Brown Book and the trial of Georgi Dimitrov and the other defendants in Leipzig from September to December 1933 was so skillfully managed that it persuaded many observers outside Germany as well as reputable historians until the 1960s that the fire was the work of a Nazi conspiracy.1 Not until 1959–60, when the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel published a five-part series based on the research of the nonacademic historian Fritz Tobias, were the Brown Book’s falsifications and misrepresentations exposed. A few years later most professional historians were persuaded that Tobias’s research was sound—the Brown Book had been discredited (at least in the Federal Republic of Germany), and the thesis of a “lone” arsonist widely accepted. (Rabinbach 2008:97). Fast forward a few decades, according to Reuters (12 October 2012), French minister Valls denounced “real enemies nursed in the bosom of France” ( La
France a de véritables ennemis en son sein ) operating through a complex web
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relaying petty criminals, organized crime and “islamisme radical” (radical islamism)2390.
The magical thinking of the primitive farming 'savage' joins the networked patriots of advanced western societies as seemingly random events lead to the discovery of one nest of ...ist rogues after another. Of course, when 'the other guy' does the same, the name for the exercise changes: conspiracy theories and canards. Telling true or false stories makes no difference as far as public reaction is concerned.
Naturally, 'impure' conspiracy theories face 'pure' coincidence theories. The exact weight of Berlusconi's long-debated Masonic involvement, or hypothesized ties with mafia; the mysterious ties between the democracy movement opposing the regime in Burma, and western countries; the sudden genesis of 'orange revolutions of freedom', 'Arab awakenings' springing up the world over fully armed from the head of 'right gods' that politeness requires to remain unnamed: fateful coincidences and sloppy seconds of no consequence.
On the other hand, Communist regimes pulling the strings of certain events was ascertained beyond doubt: Angola, Cuba, Korea, Vietnam... It is a moral duty to connect the dots of greasy ideological interconnectedness by way of adjectives: Communist armies; Nazi invasion; Fascist fifth-columns; racist cabal...why would the term “demo-plutocratic armies” smack of unfathomable 2390
La France...2012: no page.
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allegiances? The 'thing' does sell; morality requires to name all names lest virtual guilt befall us, too.
It is possible that explanations thus offered might be on no greater substance than perfunctory or commodious explanations overarching wrestling story-lines. As a mere example of such peculiar logic, wrestler Ted DiBiase was The Million Dollar Man, an outlandish multi-millionaire who could buy anything and anyone he wanted, yet -for reasons of his own never made too explicit- had chosen to be(come) a wrestler; or the One Man Gang, this vicious street thug character who â&#x20AC;&#x201C; for reasons equally mysterious- embraced his presumed African origins: he became The African Dream Akeem.
After broadsiding secret societies and their nefarious role in history, popular 'mythicist' Jordan Maxwell switches to a more careful view when on 'patriotic' speaking circuits: there are bad secret societies and good ones, namely the ones the U.S founding fathers belonged to. Maxwell equally flirts with Africanist motifs in the presence of a Black anchorman from a 'diversity center'. An Africanist position undergirds The Hidden Truth (1991) documentary, whereby purported new world order's forces occultes are exposed: they embrace an explicitly anti-Black agenda.
In The Naked Truth (19952391), a documentary that essentially repackages
2391
Finalized much earlier, as in the program guests refer to the USSR as still in existence. The USSR ceased its juridical and geopolitical existence on December 26, 1991.
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footage from The Hidden Truth2392, the Africanist position -and related footage- has been completely redacted in favor of standard debunking arguments exposing the noxious nature of religions as myths. Later again, Maxwell stands corrected and admits secret societies serve the noble purpose of safeguarding spiritualism soon to be rediscovered: he is speaking in Egypt (1999) to a diverse audience of new-agers, mythicists and spiritualists.
Opponents (=admitted conspiracy theorists turned Christian apologists) such as Chris White (former mythicist now a Protestant Christian apologist), Jon Sorensen (atheistic mythicist turned Catholic apologist) say the same exact thing in inverted terms about 'great Christianity' being recovered (=recapture motif) after the great deception Catholic hierarchies, duplicitous Roman rulers and Pagans perpetrated mixing 'real Jesus' with all sorts of sun-worship and Pagan superstition the Bible originally reproved, or the stereotypical Catholic/Protestant divide claptrap along with the worn-out tag that 'real Jesus' is god, and other people's spirits or gods are â&#x20AC;&#x153;demonsâ&#x20AC;?2393: precisely the explanation cooked in the Roman late antiquity White and his lot love to pillory.
There are also formerly engaged Christians (preachers, activists...) like Dr. Darrel W. Ray who nowadays think the idea of god is a sort of virus. He heaps scorn and ridicule upon religionists and their fixations against (homo)sexuality. Yet 2392 2393
Possibly filmed in late 1989 according to footage. In one of his documentaries, White inserts a picture of Hindu monkey god Hanuman (in a South-East Asian depiction from the Ramayana cycle) as a typical demon, which is hardly the case because the lore portrays Hanuman as a very loyal and compassionate deity. There are demons -such as King Ravana- in the lore, but White clearly has a better time basking in his newly found best of all causes.
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â&#x20AC;&#x201C; at the atheist watering hole Freethought Festival 2013- he brags about hating racists and sexists, and about exposing them whenever they reveal themselves.
He's on a mission; he's pesky and self-righteous just like a Mormon on a mission might be. At stake -just as any militant religionist might say- is not just politically authenticated charlatanry, but the eternity of presumed cosmic values. To exorcise his demons, Ray may not wield a crucifix: hammer&scythe might serve equally well, one surmises.
Ray probably reverts to good old, tried and tested shame shamanism. There's some frail, precious little creature with â&#x20AC;&#x153; languid but good eyes and a frightened look with a voice trembling with indignationâ&#x20AC;? because you told a '...ist' joke, just like religionists make one shiver in shame because one just offended Jesus who wriggles in pain in the clouds as a result of one's sin. Absolute, never before seen divine truths, or animistic forces of evil and deception are alternatively seen at work behind the curtain.
Elsewhere, J. Maxwell also embraces an idea of world government based upon alien interference schemes he had experienced himself. Maxwell also claims to have personally experienced (=the sacred vision and witness mythemes) all sorts of phenomena, including sighting pterodactyls and a miniature T-Rex in his backyard.
It goes without saying that every circle, speaking circuit and so on brings preconditions along with ready-made audiences and territories. In other words,
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visibility -or official academic subsidies- come with a series of unstated assumptions attached. Nesta Webster in her 1921 'truthing' book World Revolution made clear she parted the good, law-abiding and patriotic English masonry from the scheming and subversive European one. In recent times, attempts have been made to whitewash in like manner U.S Freemasonry:most of the U.S Founding Fathers were -according to a 2007 resolution of the U.S Congress- Freemasons.
Jimmy Guieu also involved himself with different strands of the new-age movement. As his videocassette series Les Portes Du Futur (doors on the future) demonstrates, Guieu -and a cohort of aspiring pundits in his circle- encompassed such diverse domains as UFO related conspiracy theories; paranormal, geomantic and pseudo-spiritualist theories (regarding the Cathars and reincarnation, for example). Guieu and his acolytes also co-founded IMSA ( Institut Mondial Des
Sciences AvancĂŠes2394) in 1980 proposing the same array of new-age topics.
IMSA members looked almost like Harry Potter characters, possibly because the very Harry Potter books are a concentrate of story-lines and characters so popular in the 1980s. Gangs of swashbuckling juveniles in pursuit of eerie, magic or conspiracy adventures were common TV fodder in the 1980s: Whiz Kids (19834); The Neverending Story (1984ss); The Goonies (1985); The Monster Squad (1987);Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) etc.
On a completely different level is the contention about how present 2394
World Institute Of Advanced Sciences.
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Frank Dux -the noted martial artist- might be in Van Damme's famous movie
Bloodsport (1988). Despite the insertion of a disclaimer in the end titles, controversies soon arose regarding the exact amount and extent of 'real life events' the movie portrayed. Many parties deny any credit to some -or all- events portrayed on film, and originally thought authentic.
Of course, other movies are of much bigger consequence and renown than Bloodsport. Yet so many people still hold the movie to be a generally true biography of someone who -after all- is a real martial artist: the movie's basic plot shall thus be 'true'.
By the same token, the movie Gladiator shall be as true as live footage (or nearly so) because after all there truly was a demented Roman Emperor named Commodus; Ip Man shall be true because there actually was both a Sino-Japanese war and a martial arts instructor named Ip Man etc.
The fact is that people 'love the moral of the story': awfully evil Japanese versus good-natured Chinese; or the 'tournament' version of the hero's journey. The rest is a matter of detail nobody really cares about. Japan had been invited to fight and occupy German settlements in China and the Pacific during WWI serving the best of all causes. The Japanese just decided to go farther (=Japanese imperialism) along the path they had already trodden (the invasion of Korea and Taiwan, the wars with China and Russia etc).
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Furthermore, China had been sinking into civil unrest and warfare since the XIX century (the Miao rebellions; the Taiping rebellion; the Boxer rebellion, etc.), and would continue its civil war until the Communist victory in 1949, which casts aspersions upon the fantasy of Chinese unity and harmony. Yet again, the mystical unity of the horde arch-tricksters or arch-evil perturb is a staple of mythological narration: people love the moral of these stories.
People are so eager to let the narrative take over that will emote their allegiance and rise in desecrated anger in the face of any and all inaccuracies and manipulations as they would in defense of the next press release about bayoneted babies, and crucified Canadians:”Contaste-mo tu, ou terei sonhado que o contavas? [Did you tell me that for real, or was it in a dream that you told me about that?]”.
After all, critics shall be casting whatever doubt on such narratives only because of unspeakable allegiances that exclude them from the mystical body of the entranced pack, for example covert partisans of 'impure' Japanese imperialism and ensuing misdeeds; or cowards with debased bodies who could never fight death tournaments.
There is even more. The movie Ip Man 2 clearly features two narratives that have appeared in countless movies: a Rocky-Apollo Creed narrative (=former opponent turned friend, or the same twist since Gilgamesh and Enkidu 2395 around 2395
Much as early psychoanalysts suggested, many such situations and imagery obsessing the human mind mimic infantile (or juvenile) fantasies. Tannen (2003:lecture 7) explains how male children use fights and teasing as a way to initiate interaction and friendship rather than as mere displays of enmity. Tannen (1998:191) quips:”Fighting brings people into intimate contact, which can then be recalibrated as intimacy.”.
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2.600 BCE), and a Chinese-hating White boxer who replaces Soviet avatar Ivan Drago but meets with the same fate; everybody hates, exploits or bosses the Chinese around.
In Ip Man 1 and 2, Ip Man knows no English, which doesn't prevent the storyline of Ip Man 3 (2010) from showing how he attended an English-speaking college in Hong-Kong in his youth, where he humiliated another smug White who had...disrespected the Chinese once again, only to later contend with... evil scheming
Japanese:”African
informants
may
provide
"several
conflicting
testimonies" which they all insist are "true"”.
As argued in this writing, however, the same discourse can be utilized verbatim to damn the Chinese as greedy, exploitative “whites” (the exact word in the footage) who exploit Black Africa and boss Black people around refusing to go out and have a beer with them, as the documentary Drapeau Rouge Sur Le
Continent Noir (2008) argues2396.
Of course, given that Ip Man is a movie, it's easy to part with a solomonic and noncommittal judgment; some will like the movie, some won't; some may appreciate it, some may not: it's just a movie after all.
Yet, given that it is precisely the same way as all those savior-hero, doom and gloom or deluge of tears narratives work like, the point isn't moot: there are
2396
About the growing Chinese influence and economic penetration in central Africa.
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consequences in those cases. After all viewers are led to believe the movie is based -however with some liberties- on real-life events and characters. Much as all those savior-hero, doom and gloom, landslide of emotional agony narratives purport to relay actual facts as witnessed by real people: real wars are started on the same premises.
In other words, what people are reacting to and dancing around is the
mos -those age-old images and situations tailored to present circumstances- and not the individual hoaxer or situation. It doesn't really matter whether it's fictional
Rocky set in suburban 1970s Philadelphia; or another purportedly true narrative set in Hong Kong in the 1950s; or the Belgian babies resurfacing in Kuwait decades later: it never ceases to pay dividends.
The situation never changes but in the smallest of details: the next herosavior to be ritually dismembered to 'save' us will sinisterly look like the last one; the 'arrivals' of the fervent proponents of a 'new' religion eager to share the 'good news' with us -and possibly met with rejection- will uncannily resemble old ones; the next doom or cabal they may want to save us from will look like the last one. People care about emotional truth and the gist of what is being said (=elementary idea):â&#x20AC;?observations misinterpreted through projections from the human psyche â&#x20AC;?;â&#x20AC;?The Koran was assembled from a variety of prior Hagarene texts (hence the contradictions re Jesus' death) in order to provide the Moses-like Muhammad with a
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Torah of his own ”2397.
Jesus -as some Christian scholar may emphasize to control damage- was this charming guy with a beard who had a heavenly father, and went around consorting with outcasts, performing miracles and preaching niceties only to be torn apart in death to save us. That ought to make one's heart melt in gnostic rapture. Seidensticker2398 claims that Superman can be deemed an historical character if the criteria adopted to prove Jesus' historicity are applied to Clark Kent 2399.
Whether Jesus was actually crucified the day before or after Passover is an irrelevant detail (=ethnic idea) a person who's choking, comparing notes to his own life or sobbing upon hearing about the scourging and crucifixion won't even be able to compute: the gist steals the day:
In 1988, 54-year-old Gary A. Tucker stirred law enforcement 2397
Attributed to Robert M. Price. 2014:no page. 2399 “There are Superman comics, radio shows, TV shows and cartoons, movies, and even novels and video games over a 75-year span, and the stories aren’t always consistent. Suppose a future historian is trying to make sense of this and decides to select just the uncontested facts. These might be: Superman comes from Smallville, was strong enough to lift a car, disguised himself as reporter Clark Kent, and so on. In the Superman canon, nothing contradicts these claims, so they must be historical, right? -...-If we take the comics as gospel, what extracomical evidence is there for Superman? Plenty, given the numerous radio and TV series, movies, and other media. Indeed, Jimmy Olsen first appeared in a radio show to give Clark Kent or Superman an excuse to explain what he’s thinking. There are countless instances where Superman is referenced by journalists or ordinary citizens. For example, fans might debate whether a new story line is canonical or heretical. -...-Superman originated with high school students Jerry Siegel (writer) and Joe Shuster (artist), but the entire canon is the result of many hands—other comic writers and artists, TV and movie screenwriters, radio scriptwriters, and more. Plot holes, logical flaws, and other errors are inevitable with so many contributors. The Google search “Superman continuity errors” returns a quarter million hits. More serious are the deliberate changes. For example, everyone on Superman’s home planet of Krypton originally had super powers, but later the earth’s yellow sun gave those powers to only Clark Kent. And is Superman super just as a man, or also as a teen, a boy, or a baby? Some projects reboot Superman, preserving the broad outline without being constrained by details in previous incarnations. -...-Using the techniques of Christian apologists, future Kentites would be justified in their belief. Or, if that logic is flawed and a historical Superman is ridiculous, the same is true for the gospel story. ”. 2398
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officials with a death-bed confession that he had taken part in a 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young black girls. -...-Later, David Barber, Jefferson County District Attorney said that Tucker was "a confessor to a crime that he did not commit." -...-Tucker was a cancer patient at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Tuscaloosa, AL, at the time of his confession. Tucker’s relatives said that he had been diagnosed several years earlier as a "paranoid schizophrenic." (Wilcox 1994:61). The “distorted” memories of Jesus—by which I mean memories that are not accurate in the strictly historical sense—are just as real to those who hold and share them as “true” memories (that is, historically true). -...-Does it matter if Jesus really healed the sick, cast out demons, and raised the dead? Does it matter if he himself was raised from the dead? To me as a historian it does. But if these stories are not historically accurate, does that rob them of their literary power? Not in my books. They are terrifically moving accounts. (Ehrman 2016:27,146). We then tested the volunteers’ memory of half the photos immediately after presenting them; we tested their memories of the rest of the photos twenty-four hours later. At first, it seemed that the volunteers’ memories of the emotional and neutral photos were not different; they remembered them equally well. However, when they came back to the lab a day later, something had changed. Now their recollection of the emotional photos was better than that of the neutral photos. The volunteers’ memories were not always more accurate, but they reported they were more vivid (Sharot 2011:60). This explains why just 1 in 5 U.S citizens (about 61% of practicing Christians) admits to have ever read the Bible cover to cover (2013 Barna Group study), whereas an overwhelming majority professes itself Christian: gnosticism is too hot to pass, and supersedes all.
Opponents address Jesus thus:”Why do your disciples break the tradition
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of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat! ”2400. What would have been for the divine Jesus2401 a good occasion to teach ignorant mankind about germ theories out of his oft-proclaimed godly love for us, is the occasion for another gnostic punchline of barely metaphorical value:
Anything you eat passes through the stomach and then goes into the sewer. But the words you speak come from the heart—that's what defiles you.(Matthew 15:17-18). As the lyrics of 'inspirational' soundtrack Hold On To The Vision would have it:”Keep the fire burning bright; Got to make them realize: Only with this power can you rise”. Every time it unfolds like the last; every time there are people swearing that's just how it went and what they saw:
É como se a tragédia nos apresentasse a vida em seu estado puro, livre de entraves, desdobrando-se cada ato, cada gesto plenamente em tudo o que ele abrange, apontando assim para sua origem, efetivação e conseqüências (it's as if tragedy presented life to us in its purest state, free from constraints, extending every act and gesture to its farthest consequences, thus showing its genesis, unfolding and consequences) . (Francalanci 2007:45). The pinnacle of rhetoric strategies ends up looking more as the battle of wits between stand-up comedians trying to persuade the intoxicated audience of an ale house -just the way Hitler's career as a rabble-rouser started- than a speech contest between ancient philosophers.
While the above approach may seem childish -not to mention
2400 2401
Matthew 15:2. The same can be said about all prophets and religious founders from Confucius to Joseph Smith.
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disrespectful-, it is important to realize that rhetoric -in the present writer's opinion at least- is like oriental cuisine: a thousand glamorous, evocative or poetic names may be used to describe what essentially is chicken with almonds or beef with onions.
The very personification of the dilemma represented by 'the right side of the myth', Antigone, can be colored to reflect any political or social idea. The story of the excruciating conflict between what the law/established order requires, and what feels emotionally right, or the superseding rules dictated by an 'higher order', can be tinted to satisfy any and all tastes.
First of all, it is opportune to emphasize how the play Antigone reflected concerns specific to ancient Greek culture, such as the conflict between oikos (home or the family/clan), genos (lineage) and polis
(the city); or physis and nomos
(nature, hence family/clan versus the law as determined by city authorities). Still in 1896, the U.S Supreme Court ruled in favor of segregated transportation in Louisiana alleging that the customs and traditions of local Whites superseded constitutional amendments that favored equal protection under the law.
The fact that physis and oikos included blood relations enlarged to the clan, or the ancient Greek tribes, and superseded -in the myth- arbitrary laws passed by a composite collective body signifies the triumph of blood rights over legal rights, thus the exact opposite of what the common interpretation is meant to imply. 1926
Because he cannot prove his lineage, the newly anointed king of Anga, Karna (the son of the Sun god Surya in the Mahabharata), is spurned thus by Draupadi as he wins the nuptial tournament:”I do not wish to marry a man who does not know who his parents are and who was raised in the family of lowly charioteers.”2402.
At any rate, Antigone's mentality was common currency in antiquity, for Diodorus Siculus (I century BCE) writes thus ( Library 9.26.5):”The peculiar characteristic of wisdom consists in showing a greater respect to the truth which nature imparts than to the ordinance of the law ”. The same conundrum has been belabored to death throughout the ages:
And Parzival - here's the key now, this is the crisis of the story is filled with compassion and is moved to ask, "What ails you, uncle [=the King of the enchanted Grail castle who had been castrated in battle]?" But immediately he thinks, "A knight does not ask questions." And so, in the name of his social image, he continues the Waste Land principle of acting according to the way you've been told to act instead of the way of the spontaneity of your noble nature (Campbell 1989: In Search Of The Holy Grail). Fortified with potent emotions, conscience is a glue that holds us together, and it is stickier than it is just. It cherishes humanistic ideals more than laws (Stout 2005:34). On this wavelength, Francalanci sees2403 the entire catastrophe arising 2402 2403
In Pattanaik 2000:33. “Os deuses gregos não são a pura liberdade, acima da necessidade representada pelas leis da natureza: eles são a própria natureza, desde que a compreendamos sem nenhuma conotação bucólica ou idílica, nem como a contrapartida ao campo do humano. “Natureza” aqui não diz mais do que a realidade em seu todo, considerada a partir dos poderes e limites que cada âmbito da realidade possui. O peso da pedra, a leveza da chama, a perene fluidez da água, o poder desvairante do amor, a força desocultadora da palavra, o poder soberano do cuidado, de velar para que cada coisa se mostre e consume como isso que ela é: isto é o que perfaz, basicamente, a
1927
out of lack of respect for and transgression of boundaries against surrounding nature as panpsychic and divinely alive. Animals carrying Antigone's unburied brother's torn apart body into the city trigger a plague: foreseeable consequence of a very unwise act regardless of any possible political spin and gibberish.
In the past, people might have remarked that disposing of the 'impure' corpses the way folklore prescribed for alleged vampires (for example by burning) did curb epidemics, thus reinforcing folk beliefs in the undead's actual existence. Many supposed vampires (or victims thereof) were probably just victims of tuberculosis or other infectious diseases, whose symptoms closely matched those of vampirism (slow consumption, anemia, hemoptysis...). Aguerre 2404 connects vampirism with plague and hysteria epidemics.
The first known reference to an American vampire scare is a scolding letter to the editor of the Connecticut Courant and Weekly Intelligencer, published in June 1784. Councilman Moses Holmes, from the town of Willington, warned people to beware of “a certain Quack Doctor, a foreigner” who had urged families to dig up and burn dead relatives to stop consumption. Holmes had witnessed several children disinterred at the doctor’s request and wanted no more of it (Tucker 2012:no page).
experiência grega do divino. A experiência grega do real, expressa desde sua compreensão do divino, o apreende em seus limites inexoráveis, que não podem ser franqueados. Contrapondo-se a isto, está a solidão da liberdade humana, que deve auto-legislar-se, forjar as leis sob as quais irá viver e conviver. Contudo, é o que a tragédia aponta, estas leis precisam estar afinadas, isto é, a lei humana só pode verdadeiramente denominar-se justa, dikaia, quando feita em escuta e obediência às leis que não são nada além da própria realidade. Quando este limite do humano é ultrapassado, o que vemos como ira divina não pertence à ordem do milagre, isto é, do extra-natural, como nos relatos judaico-cristãos, mas sim à das catástrofes ditas “naturais”: em Antígona, os animais carregam partes do corpo destroçado de Polinices para o centro da cidade e para os próprios altares, deflagrando uma peste. O que se encontra aqui expresso é a realidade em suas múltiplas facetas: se a natureza pode mostrar-se benéfica e dadivosa para aqueles que a habitam articulando-se com ela, ela igualmente aparece como catastrófica, selvagem, inabitável quando seus limites não são respeitados.” (2007:49). 2404 Le Vampire 1984: episode 3.
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Francalanci's point is still salient and at the core of the most poignant arguments throughout the Cold War. Whoever might have been construed as winner of a nuclear war, if any, would have inherited only a barren, uninhabitable and contaminated landscape of no use. The same goes for many biological weapons.
The anthrax the British experimented with and planned to use on German cities during WWII in defence of 'the best of all causes' could be definitely purged from the remote Scottish isles it had been tested on only after decades of waiting and radical control measures. It also helps to ponder how technicalities were the only reason why the attack never took place.
Agamemnon is the one who puts blood rights second to external laws, but his tricking of his own daughter Iphigenia to slaughter her as a sacrifice to the gods to be allowed to sail to attack, then sack Troy somewhat doesn't fit the social alchemist's bill. Again, what matters is how stories (myths, allegories...) make one feel, not the story's philological meaning that eludes the masses in favor of the gasping for breath, clenching of one's stomach and so forth.
Naturally, the Antigone myth can simply become the embodiment of someone rejecting collective laws in favor of a 'higher principle x' (whatever that happens to be at the moment), but then Yogi Bear or the Hong Kong Phooey could be used likewise in the sole intent of embracing fashionable values that delight polite company with predictable postures. Why aren't they? Well, simply because the Hong Kong Phooey hasn't been around for thousands of years, and hasn't been 1929
talked about in all sorts of guises until the cows come home.
The South African University of the Free State announced:
It is a false argument to debate the issue in terms of “force”. Any decision by a University, or any other organisation, regarding matters of policy, rules and regulations implies a restriction on the choice of an individual and an obligation to comply. What we should focus on is whether this decision of the Council is in the best interests of our students. -...- Yes, the University of the Free State did integrate its residences as far back as 1993, and for a few years it worked. The UFS did it at that time and is now doing so again, because it is the right thing to do2405. Is it time for Antigone to rise against arbitrary laws, or is it time for Socrates to toe the party line? Is the coercion factor that counts, or the color of the enforcer's armband that supersedes any infantile morality (“false argument”)? Is morality about black and white sharp absolutes, or about endless shades of soft gray? Should people follow Mandela's example, who chose to perform Antigone while in prison to denounce the overpowering State and its abuses? Or is this one of those curious cases where the opposite happens to apply?
The more or less significant Fascist parties cropping up the world over after WWI are described as the dystopian product of Goya's el suenho de la razón
[que] produce monstruos (Reason's sleep [that] generates monsters). On the other hand, some local experts hail the 1988 Brazilian Constitution because of its unparalleled criminalization of racism (art. XLII) and because it paved the way to extensive affirmative action programs. Is that a late edition of the 1960s, or did 2405
Message posted on a mailing list in 2009. The university's page referred to apparently no longer exists.
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reason just begin generating a different kind of monsters?
It isn't without irony that the first Presidential terms of the new age of Brazilian democracy announced with so much pomp would end with an economic catastrophe and an impeachment following widespread corruption scandals. In 2016, the proud nation of Brasil is still mired in corruption scandals: awesome freedom fighter2406 and Socialist President Rousseff is impeached.
Cuba in more recent decades, and Chavez's Venezuela in more recent years, are no different in offering the same bizarre concoction of caudillismo, affirmative actions, dirigisme, populism, nationalism and socialism that used to be the answer in the 1930s. It is in fact usual to spot huge murals with slogans such as “homeland first”, “we will win” or “right or wrong it's my country” that used to be the norm under Fascist regimes or military -and suchlike- regimes such as that of Brazil, which does not prevent left-wing hobos from extolling Cuba's virtues to the sky.
Fidel Castro, one could argue, is a textbook fascist. But because the left approves of his resistance to U.S. "imperialism"--and because he uses the abracadabra words of Marxism--it's not just wrong but objectively stupid to call him a fascist. Meanwhile, calling Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Rudy Giuliani, and other conservatives fascists is simply what right-thinking, sophisticated people do. (Goldberg 2007:10). Communities are being imagined on a regular basis: being Malay, Muslim and Monarchic in Brunei; monarchism, national customs and expulsion of 2406
She claims to have been detained and tortured under the military dictatorship.
1931
the Nepalese (with all that entailed) in Bhutan in recent decades. There really is no limit to which 'higher principle' one might choose in order to defy order, to throw a grenade or anything of that sort: the rest is a matter of fleeting political judgment.
Histrionic Chavez scandalizes the international mainstream, dances, cracks jokes (= personable savior), tantalizes the enraptured horde at his feet with projections of never-ending progressive social alchemy. After all, he's another rogue turned hero, for he failed in an attempt to seize power in 1992, suffered imprisonment and indignities, yet ultimately triumphed in the long run. The heroic attitudes positive psychologists prescribe definitely pay dividends, with their gnostic baggage of resilience, visions, role models, trials and tribulations:
President Barack Obama has made headlines for unexpectedly crooning a song or two in public since coming to the White House. Now he can add dancing the tango to his list of hidden talents. (Reuters, March 24, 2016). Venezuela's central bank on Thursday released long-awaited data showing the depth of the OPEC country's recession, a day after President Nicolas Maduro announced a package of measures seen as insufficient to salvage the unraveling economy. The bank reported that Venezuelan inflation hit 180.9 percent in 2015, one of the highest rates in the world, while the economy contracted 5.7 percent. (Reuters, February 19, 2016). The Fascist Vichy government that embodied the ideals of the French revolt2407 (authority, patriarchy, rusticity, Catholicism, royalism....) against the Jacobin legacy could 'antigonize' its own worldview much as say the partisans of 2407
”les grands mots d'ordre de la Révolution Nationale : un pouvoir fort et libre, des professions organisées, la famille respectée et soutenue, une réglementation qui permette à chacun de vivre. ” as Petain termed it on August 30, 1942)
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overthrown left-wing President Allende could, or any other instance for that matter.
The (ab)use of iconic characters from history to serve petty and adventitious political goals of all sorts is a recurring event:
the mobilizations of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Socratesâ&#x20AC;? for theatre and television audiences in North America in the early 1950s. I argue that during this period of acute political stress over issues of national security, Cold War orthodoxies, and McCarthyism, creative artists developed distinctive interpretations of Socrates as oblique contributions to the raging political controversies, and in so doing helped inaugurate the widespread use of Socrates as a popular symbol of the ideals of democracy. (Monoson no date:1). Anyways, Socrates -incidentally the mentor of noxious politician and arch-traitor Alcibiades- had already debunked the Antigone method in his defense of the same law that had condemned him to death. Of course, opponents will deny the Vichy government's standing on the ground of its being a facade for the German occupation, and ensuing misdeeds. The same people will probably object to any comparison taking place between Vichy's standing (German occupation) and the standing of so many European governments after 1945 (Soviet or U.S military occupation still ongoing at this time). It just might be the case the opposite happens to hold true, as in Europe it is common currency to claim that U.S military bases are a literal boon to the local economy, and a way to cut defense budgets, thus making room for more social alchemy.
Alternatively, readers might think of the row of subaltern governments
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spawning the world over as a result of more or less direct 'model export' hegemonic powers busy themselves with. Naturally, regimes subaltern to NSDAP Germany (or the USSR) are just that: sinister charades by a bunch of oppressive opportunists disconnected from their compatriots, and buttressed by foreign invasion forces, secret police and garrison state. Other regimes are inversely the spontaneous reaction the thirst for sacred values triggered in this or that country's good people with one iota of intelligence and military force deployed to safeguard the glorious achievements from unsavory posses.
A squabble arises in Ukraine in 2014 between a provisional (proWestern) regime 'magically' materializing in Kiev after the overthrow of (proRussian) President Yanukovyc, and a pro-Russian mob. Russian forces soon appear to back pro-Russian insurrectionists in (Russian majority) Crimea: a textbook case.
Critics point to the Russian "occupation" of Crimea as evidence that no fair vote could have taken place. Where were these people when an election held in an Iraq occupied by U.S. troops was called a "triumph of democracy"? Perhaps the U.S. officials who supported the unconstitutional overthrow of Ukraine's government should refocus their energies on learning our own Constitution, which does not allow the U.S. government to overthrow governments overseas or send a billion dollars to bail out Ukraine and its international creditors. (Paul 2014:no page). In April 2014, after Crimea votes to be part of Russia, the focus -as in the umpteenth season of a riveting cable TV spy series- shifts to eastern Ukraine as civil war between pro-Russian and pro-Western parties possibly looms on the horizon. Valiant USA and its many client States berate Moscow's invisible hand
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behind all the unrest: a new Danzig? While economic countermeasures against Russia might be adopted, Moscow threatens retaliations: flooding the market with junk bonds Russia(ns) once bought to help now hostile countries to finance their crippling deficits.
The Chinese consider the annexation of Tibet as a merciful deed to deliver the peasant masses from an oppressive theocracy while opening modernity's doors to them:
Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese after 1959, they did abolish slavery and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid labor. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular schools, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa (Parenti 2007:6). Lincoln’s personal indifference to slavery (if true) is, to say the least, disappointing, but his actions led millions of people from slavery to freedom. (Ben-Shahar 2011:91, emphasis added). The argument that hegemonic power X ' did not exactly' target whichever subaltern group Y for destruction – due to whatever reason- because otherwise no group Y would be left to talk about it is an argument that circulates in many milieus:”if that is true after all”.
The difference in feedback between an hardcover edition by a university press, and a lawsuit, death threats or character assassination merely depends on the commodious role assigned to the blanked parts in texts that are utilized verbatim -or
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nearly so- by activists and pamphleteers on the presumably opposing ends of all political or religious spectra.
Parenti is not alone. A delegation of Belgian parliamentarians visited Communist North Korea2408. Tovarish Burgeon (Parti Socialiste, Socialist Party) sympathized with North-Koreans scorching as “propaganda” all the purported human
right
and
abuse
reports
the
delegation
was
called
upon
to
investigate.”Knowing the unpopularity it may bring, [it] speaks strongly for the integrity of the historians involved” is one way to look at it. It is easy to guess what the reaction might have been if a parliamentarian had addressed on the same terms former Fascist honchos, especially as Belgian parliamentarians sung Communist songs on tape with North-Korean appatchiki.
Parenti -and like pamphleteers- ignore that even Fascist regimes brought about social reforms (for example the limit of eight hours of daily work in Italy), “eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular schools”. The Tibetan government in exile, however, sees an imperialist superpower at work brutally digesting another subaltern culture.
Chinese immigrants flocking to what is legally a Chinese province are denounced as the soft weapon to destroy Tibetan culture from within. That's the supposed proof of Chinese duplicity against which Tibetan recourse to any form of 2408
Dutilleul 2004.
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resistance is more than justified.
No sad song serves as a background for a compassionate speaker detailing the plight of such impoverished Chinese masses who deserve better and must be welcome with open arms as vital addition to secure a brilliant future of economic expansion, cultural hybridism and diversity that rejects xenophobic degeneration under the preposterous fig leaf of purities and cultures that are only tribal fixations anyways.
After all, by a geopolitical standpoint, what is underway in Tibet is an internal migration of Chinese citizens within China. Tibetans differ from the mainstream Chinese in roughly the same way the many ethno-cultural groups differed within Yugoslavia, the USSR, Czechoslovakia or -for the matter- the UK, France, Spain or Italy.
Other than by sheer political commodity or intellectual dishonesty can one blame the genesis of Belle Epoque nation-States on Mao and his presumed Chinese irredentism (Hitler and pan-germanism, etc) after such horn has been tooted by all under the sun: sweet Serbians and their brotherhood of southern Slavs; hallowed Italians and the Roman heritage...
Kang Youwei had outlined the strategy very well during the very Belle
Epoque: the nation-State acts as relentless food processor based upon centralism and communism in order to engineer a thoroughly homogenized citizenry by a ethno-
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cultural and phenotypical standpoint. A Scot and a Welsh; a Venetian and a Sicilian; a Breton and a Corsican -assumed any such community may nowadays exist in an original state- may have as much in common as a Tibetan and a Chinese.
No 'expert' bewildering the gallery with the jargon of economics -another strand of modern pig Latin- will detail the innumerable good deeds of the Chinese administration with colorful charts. If someone spoke, his voice would just sound as falsetto reading cue cards his masters supplied, and his 'hard facts' as the usual bunkum cooked by spin-doctors working for so many dollars an hour.
The season is recurrently open on the Chinese in the Italian press, whereby routine campaigns expose the misdeeds of the Chinese on Italian soil (spoilt food in their restaurants; rogue takeovers of entire neighborhoods; mafia; unethical industrial practices...), open the cages (=interview people) and let hobos (=the public) vent their anger (=voice understandable concerns) in terms that would be either censored, struck under this, that or another '...ist' censhorship law, or both if applied to other categories/groups (for example African immigrants): sweet inconsistencies of that boon to mankind that is the (more or less) free and independent press.
Millions of third world immigrants flocking to the West, however, do deserve that treatment: no eerie duplicities at work there, no 'master plan', just the overwhelming ebb and flow of our wonderful 'common humanity' and its miseries crass egoism cannot suppress:â&#x20AC;?Go and try to look inside his heart you can find your 1938
own mistakes try to hide them thinking -...- but he can read them in your face”.
Surges in crime, violence and societal disintegration that result from such massive migrations, however, are liquidated claiming that “society”, “inequalities”, “...ism made them do it”. Could it be the same case with Chinese violence in Tibet? Of course not. Chinese violence that tears Tibetan society apart is the poisoned fruit of a “deliberate and systematic master plan”.
All that shall just translate into a new bonanza for the accommodating party liner, as legions of new slaves shall toil infallibly away to propel this, that or another Ponzi or welfare State scheme for his own good. Anything the meek masses may hear to the contrary comes from 'you know who' hiding behind duplicitous words ready to do 'you know what' once again. Tenors in trendy moral costumes open their golden mouths2409 explaining just why in their tragic operetta world.
Claiming that Mao Tse-Tung “pressed forward to fight and save China”; or that Assad “pressed forward to fight and save Syria” 2410 might probably attract angry stares, yet -should the same phrase include Abraham Lincoln and the United States2411 - it would be a completely different story. Lincoln started a bloody war to “save the USA”: he is hailed as savior; Santa Anna sent troops to “save Mexico” trying to thwart Texas' independence: such an inexcusable villain.
Many Saints are in fact dubbed chrysostom=golden mouth. In Hindu Rig Veda ( XV century BCE or older), the god Savitar (the creator) is also called “O God of the golden tongue ”. 2410 There are no limits: Hitler pressed forward to save Germany; Amin pressed forward to save Uganda... 2411 Manzke 2008:15. 2409
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Fears2412 compares the war of independence Texas fought to secede from Mexico to the Trojan War; Davy Crockett and his comrades to Hector and Achilles, and Sam Houston to King Arthur. Of course, one has to pick his heroes carefully: lawfare may befall those who pick the wrong swashbuckling arch-trickster.
In addition, the declining mass opinion leaders (European Christian churches/parties pushed increasingly to the margins; Social-Communist parties bereft of a compass since the implosion of the Soviet block) can hope to revive their withering thrust recruiting -as they did in their mythical beginnings- among the incoming pariah and dispossessed.
Harvard researcher Richwine2413 profiled immigrants to the U.S thus in 2009:
The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations, The consequences are a 2412 2413
2011: The Alamo. As one may expect in the contemporary world of free press and sacred liberties postwar western massdemocracy presides over, payback was not far down the road for Richwine exerting his academic freedom after all:”Jason Richwine, the co-author of a controversial immigration study released this week by the Heritage Foundation, tells Post Politics that he has resigned his position with the organization.“Yes, that’s right,” Richwine wrote in a brief e-mail. Heritage confirmed that he resigned. The study written by Richwine and Robert Rector argued that the immigration reform bill would cost $6.3 trillion, but it was widely panned by conservative groups pushing for immigration reform as not accounting for the economic benefits of immigrants. Complicating matters were a series of revelations about Richwine, including that he had written a doctoral thesis at Harvard University arguing that the United States should focus its immigration efforts on those with high IQs and that he had written for a Web site that describes itself as “nationalist.”” (Blake 2013:no page). The usual theatrics ensued, whereby psychotic characters on both sides of the divide either shook fists at Richwine's dissertation, or distanced themselves from it, both pretending they had no way to know this otherwise regularly approved thesis had been publicly available all along. Groups on both sides of the divide now describe the thesis written at prestigious Harvard university as clumsy, inept, biased etc. Even Richwine's official academic advisors he profusely thanked in his thesis now either distance themselves from the entire affair, or -like the thesis committee chair Borjas- argue they neither worked on any similar subject, nor do they believe in the entire IQ debate at all (Weigel 2013: no page).
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lackof socioeconomic assimilation among low-IQ immigrant groups, more underclass behavior, less social trust, and an increase in the proportion of unskilled workers in the American labor market. (iii). The Catholic Church desperately tried to capitalize on Black Africa's human potential. For years in the 1990s, Zambian monsignor Milingo was a popular culture icon on Italian TV and Catholic-friendly media, as unchecked African immigration had become matter of public outcry: synchronicity, indeed.
In 1983, Milingo had to relinquish his position as archbishop after engaging in exorcism and faith healing the Catholic Church disapproved of, as more similar to tribal practices than to Catholic rites, following ample demonstrations Milingo gave on Italian media.
Even among scholars, Afro-Christianity raises a few eyebrows: authentic Christianity, or just the old universe of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Black sacred cosmosâ&#x20AC;? in a discombobulated mixture of Christian elements in a matrix of native tribal Yoruba (or otherwise) religiosity?
A bizarre tango ensued between outspoken Milingo and the Catholic hierarchy, whereby the African monsignor repeatedly clashed with, was expelled, readmitted and finally reduced to lay status on the basis of his stances regarding priests and marriages (Milingo himself married a Korean), the endorsement of a book containing supposed messages Jesus had channeled, etc.
Despite all efforts, the Catholic Church hoisted on the Milingo petard, 1941
which put the Black African strategy on the back burner. Some contend the election of Argentinian Pope Francis I epitomizes the Catholic choice to test a LatinAmerican strategy at least for the time being.
Musing upon fantasy scenarios of improbable wars among SouthAmerican countries over the bounties of either Antarctica or pampas, Chilean Fascist intellectual Serrano quips:”Algo le falla a esta gente, porque no se puede decir que sean cobardes los chilenos. Cuando Chile entra a la guerra no lo para nadie. En Chile hay una raza homogénea, pero lo que falta es un guía. ” 2414 (These people miss something, because you can't say Chileans are cowards. When Chile goes to war, nobody can stop it. There is a homogeneous race in Chile, although a leader is missing). Are heaps of scorn enough to meet such senseless drivel? Did anyone notice Japanese far-right groups haranguing a frazzled crowd sleepwalking in complete indifference to urge them to stand up to the Chinese menace in a preposterous clash of civilizations? Isn't Luke Skywalker screaming his horror already?
As always, the opposite may chance to apply. Ben-Shahar 2415 introduces Ronald Reagan:”the great communicator, who brought out the resolve of the American people and the free world and defeated the evil empire”. In recent times, 'Arab springs', wars on terror and Orange revolutions have paved the way to the invasion of countries, and the violent overthrow of several regimes. If Serrano's 2414 2415
Castro 2004: no page. 2005-6a:lecture 1.
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Fascist sermon about Chile being unstoppable at war in its righteousness was at its wrongest, it suffices to interpolate the USA or its satellites to turn the same statement into a maxim worth of any temple's pediment.
Why would inserting the names of Hitler, Franco, Amin, etc in the same fable (the providential leader, the horde in fusion, the quintessential foe or injustice to overcome, the manifest destiny and related paraphernalia) result in angry stares, neurological syndromes and possibly lawfare? Serrano's unflinching allegiance to the NSDAP regime is only comparable to former Soviet block Cominform dispatches. Or does the opposite chance to apply here, too?
Even today, we can read on the website of a political association serving as 'civil society front' for Berlusconi's right-wing party Forza Italia:
Noi siamo impegnati a riaffermare il valore della civiltĂ occidentale come fonte di princĂŹpi universali e irrinunciabili, contrastando, in nome di una comune tradizione storica e culturale, ogni tentativo di costruire un'Europa alternativa o contrapposta agli Stati Uniti. ( We engage ourselves to uphold the worth of western civilization as source of prime and universal principles; we will fight -in the name of shared historical and cultural background- any attempt at building Europe on premises either alternative or opposed to the United States) (Occidens 2011: no page, emphasis added). The most elated partisans of any 'bad' regime couldn't possibly have written such a flat, unconditional and automatic plea of allegiance to their 'great protector-ally'.
Another possible example of pliable mythologies comes from the
1943
question of the “7800 crates of gold” 2416 of the bank of Spain that the radical leftwing government transferred to the USSR (through France) during the Civil War. Again, the diminutive, romantic register is employed: what would have been labeled as immoral pillage at the enemy's hands, which no indignation could ever castigate enough, becomes “safekeeping”. The exact quantity of gold is gallantly omitted not to drive a wedge into the eulogized 'bigger picture' of the 'good cause', instead of being committed on brass plates to posterity as a ritual memorialization item.
The same broken record effect recurs endlessly: savage Fascists pillaged a host of countries hoarding gold, artworks, machinery and currency for crass personal enjoyment; meek anti-Fascists “casually discovered” heaps of gold, machinery, artworks and currency in occupied enemy countries, which they “kept safe for the good of all mankind”:
There is no doubt, however, of Sulla’s [Roman general, statesman and dictator. Here fighting in the Mithridatic wars, 90 BCE ss] purposes as he was engaged in the siege of Athens [Sulla would sack Athens in 86 BCE]: “Since Sulla needed much money for the war, he was disturbing those places of Greece that were sacrosanct, sending for the most beautiful and expensive dedications, in part from Epidauros, in part from Olympia. He wrote also to the Amphictiones at Delphi, saying that it was better for the god’s treasures to be brought to him. For, he said, he would guard them more securely or, if he used them, he would pay back no less. -...-And when some said that they heard a lyre sounding in the inner chamber of the temple, Caphis, 2416
“Since 1936 Russia has been sitting on more than half a billion dollars worth of Spanish gold. When the civil war was only three months old, pro-Communist Finance Minister Juan Negrin secretly ordered 7,800 crates of gold out of the Bank of Spain, had it trucked to Cartagena and then shipped to Russia in charge of four bank officials, for "safekeeping." “(Spain 1957, no page).
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either because he believed it or because he wished to throw the fear of god into Sulla, wrote to Sulla about it. Sulla jokingly wrote in response that he was surprised that Caphis did not understand that the singing was not of an angry god but of a happy god, and, since the god was cheerfully giving, he ordered Caphis to take the treasures” confidently. (Mikalson 1998:107). Alternatively, key figures in the operation may be described as clueless, diminutive, sickly or acting under a varying array of overwhelming threats coming from all the provinces of the political spectrum: this invokes the child and puppy reflex;”the explanation is that good people will let pathetic individuals get by with murder, so to speak”;”an attempt to hotwire a connection” (Alice Williams).
Furthermore, ideological interconnectedness (the left-wing French government and the Soviet government taking part in the operation) shall be politely downplayed or sublimated, while at the same time castigating the enemy's connections (Franco as Mussolini's and Hitler's crony, and caudillismo as the Spanish arm of the international Fascist menace).
In recent or actual times, right-wing Austrian leader Haider had been berated as he exchanged courtesies with Libya's Gaddafi and Iraq's Saddam Hussein, being possibly on their payroll2417. The same sources possibly fund all sorts of political actors, for -according to Reuters on May 3, 2012- Gaddafi allegedly 2417
“Joerg Haider, who died in a car crash in 2008, was the head of the far-right Freedom Party before breaking away to form the Alliance for the Future of Austria five years ago. During his political career, he achieved notoriety for, among other things, a visit to Iraq to meet Saddam on the eve of the 2003 US-led invasion and a friendship with Gaddafi when Libya was still an international pariah. Extracts from a confiscated black booklet, handwritten by Walter Meischberger, a former Freedom Party politician, are to be published in Wednesday's issue of Falter, a Vienna weekly. According to an advance copy of the Falter article, the diary mentions a $58.7m transfer from Gaddafi, as well as more than $13.3m that unidentified individuals brought home from Iraq. ” (Austria Investigates...2010: no page).
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transferred US$ 50 million to finance Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign; ages earlier, a scandal had highlighted financial transfers from Central-African dictator Bokassa (1966-79) to French President D'Estaing.
D'Estaing in his beginnings had also supposedly benefited from a rogue flow of money from Francoist Spain (the MATESA industrial scandal the press claims was orchestrated by Opus Dei technocrats within the Francoist government). D'Estaing would ultimately lose the presidency to Socialist candidate -and former apparatchik of the Fascist Vichy regime- Mitterrand.
New political faces end up increasingly looking -and acting- like old ones. Naturally, when honchos of Italy's Partito Democratico (the new designation of the Communist Party) exchange deferential visits or courtesies with U.S Democrats, motives shall be assumed to be the best possible. No eerie links are established with the bloody legacy of world Social-Communism and its countless victims:
Barack Obama praised Matteo Renzi in a newspaper interview on Tuesday, endorsing the under-fire Italian Prime Minister's reform agenda ahead of his state visit to Washington and a referendum that will define his political legacy. (Reuters, October 18, 2016). The times parties on the opposite ends of the political gamut shopped for subsidies on either -or both- ends of the iron curtain supposedly ended in 1990. Liulevicius gives an example of such curious attitude emphatically proclaiming 2418
2418
2003:Total Revolution In Russia.
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how Lenin was not a German spy. Technically, Liulevicius might be right, for Lenin was not an informant for hire or an offhand provocateur, but a genuine Socialcommunist revolutionary. Nevertheless, it is equally true that:
1.
Germany was instrumental in Lenin's repatriation.
2.
The Russian provisional (Menshevik) government (socialist in orientation) at
some point accused Lenin of being a German spy, prompting Lenin to escape in disguise.
3.
Some sources â&#x20AC;&#x201C; such as prominent German Socialdemocrat Bernstein- wrote
about fabulous sums Germany supplied to fund Lenin's cause. For some reason -and irrespective of any exact amount-, the fact that Germany funded Lenin registers badly with most intellectuals who -on the other hand- have no problem in detailing how the French funded Mussolini when he converted to nationalism. The USA funded, trained, and spurred Communist Viet-Minh. Castro toured the USA raising funds to equip his future revolutionary campaigns. Khomeini was acclaimed as he sought sanctuary in France for 112 days. Hitler, too, joined the NSDAP (or DAP as the party was then called) as agent of German military intelligence; rumors circulate about suspicious ties with England: was Hitler a British agent?
Yet, it isn't always about perfunctory, preposterous ethical or political diatribes, or best of intentions that can be interpreted whichever way. Ventriloquism for the higher good is not just a rhetorical exercise with no tangible
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peacetime consequences in the common man's life. The multi-millionaire (sources claim it bilked motorists UK£ 104 millions in 2006-7 in England&Wales only 2419) industry of speed traps and related paraphernalia is regularly exposed as a rigged and fraudulent revenue-raising exercise; the English Parliament disclaims it 2420, while Reuters (14 October 2010) writes that in France revenue from “infractions légères” (small violations) of traffic regulations shall increase in order to help with “les déficits qui grèvent les caisses de l'Etat. ” 2421 (deficits that plague State finance). In the Italian case of “semafori truffa”, or rigged traffic lights 2422, after years of legal jousting, the justice system doesn't deem necessary to compensate drivers for fines they had been extorted through such fraudulent practice, while most of the defendants are acquitted of all charges2423.
Thanks to the blank cheque the public writes to a swarm of 'all-seeing' public eyes in order to pursue eerie utopian schemes culled from long-dead hacks, a row of morally enterprising national, regional, provincial and municipal authorities tap into the bottomless reservoir of violations related to vehicles, to keep only to a marginal sector of public revenue: “More than £87million was collected from speeding fines and red-light offences in the 2008-09 ” (Parsons 2011: no page).”Simon Moon from This is Money replies: I spoke to the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Transport who told me the income from speeding fines goes into what is known as the Treasury's consolidated fund, which is a bit of jargon that really means the Government's own bank account. The Department for Transport told me its most recent figure (2006/07) for the total revenue from drivers caught by speed cameras in England and Wales was £104.4m. This was down from £114.6m the previous year. It was at pains to point out that the Government gives £110m a year to all the local authorities in England and Wales to spend on road safety.” ('Where does speed camera cash go?' 2009: no page). 2420 “Numerous groups and websites exist to promote this view. However, the income generated in excess of operating costs is relatively small (£4.3 million in 2001/02).” (Postnotes 2004:4). 2421 Les Amendes...2010: no page. 2422 Traffic lights equipped with cameras to fine transgressors. This method has been exposed a number of times as a fraudulent way to produce revenue. 2423 ANSA, 3 February 2014. 2419
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The optimism bias is a cognitive illusion. -...-. As in choice blindness blindness or the introspection illusion, we do not believe we can be fooled. Yes, maybe our colleagues are unrealistically optimistic, as are citizens of a foreign country, but not us -...- Since the [human brain's] frontal lobes selectively recorded desirable errors but failed to record undesirable ones, people learned more from the good news than from the bad news. -...-Underestimating the probability of future adverse events reduces our level of stress and anxiety, which is beneficial to our health. -...-Moderate optimists worked longer hours, expected to retire later in life, saved more (with longer planning horizons), and smoked less than all other individuals.(Sharot 2011:22,122-124, emphasis added). According to some sources, a prevision related to the city of Milan alone gives an amount of euro 330 million for 2012 as revenue exacted on the basis of violations of city laws and regulations (including speed tickets and other violations)2424. The small town of Arona (Italy, 14.000 residents) allegedly cashed about euro 1 million in only four months, according to estimates evaluating the revenue drawn from vehicles violating a newly established, part-time pedestrian zone2425. In 2012, Arona also cashed tickets relative to 6.000 traffic violations 2426: trifle in comparison with the 2,4 million (yes, million) tickets the city of Milan issued in 20132427. That notwithstanding, Arona's sidewalks are in an awful state of repair, which poses a threat to pedestrians, among whom several victims -and ensuing grievances and lawsuits against the city- can already be counted. Administrators are powerless, however, and denounce the city's dire financial 2424
â&#x20AC;&#x153;Per questo il bilancio di previsione 2012 riporta la cifra di 330 milioni di euro alla voce entrate da contravvenzioni ai regolamenti di Polizia Locale e norme codice della strada (multe per infrazioni sulla strada, decoro urbano, annonaria, raccolta rifiuti eccetera). Se il bilancio del 2011 fosse stato redatto secondo lo stesso principio contabile usato nel 2012 avrebbe riportato un'entrata di 250 milioni di euro invece di 93 milioni. â&#x20AC;? (Redazione 2012: no page). 2425 Pirino 2012:7. 2426 Pirino 2013:9. 2427 Il Giornale, January 17, 2014.
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situation that allows only emergency interventions.
In May 2013, Arona's administrators announce no data relative to the revenue violations of the the part-time pedestrian zone generate shall be passed on to the press. Indignant administrators lament such data only foster sensationalism in the press and “kill tourism”2428: leaders are authentic, indeed.
Anxieties about publicity appear justified very soon: in June 2013 alone, Arona allegedly issued 2.000 tickets for the violation of said part-time pedestrian zone; 3.280 tickets were also issued for trespassing into said zone in July-August 2013: “If we annoy people, blessed be the Lord.”. Arona city hall opposition party
PD officially comments that how this humongous cash stream is put to use remains a mystery hidden in the maze of city hall's bureaucracy 2429. Soon Arona undertakes a massive public works campaign.
In nearby Gattico, six more speed traps are added to protect people from themselves. To naysayers who try to sabotage such 'honest' initiative, Gattico's mayor retorts that in the past such exercises have allowed the city hall to lower the local waste tax2430. A few kilometers away, the charming little township of Varallo is in a deep state of financial distress due to reckless past administrative choices. The new administration pledges to lower taxes in spite of legal impediments: speed traps are installed in 2016 while administrators hail safety for all and the legality of speed Giornale Di Arona, 24 May 2013. Pirino 2013:29. 2430 Giornale Di Arona, May 13, 2016, p.19. 2428 2429
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limits2431.
At Naples -at the end of January 2013-, public transportation services are suspended because there is no fuel left to run the service 2432; city streets and driveways are in a dangerous state of dilapidation: administrators are powerless.
The city of Novara (Italy, 105.000 residents) is also powerless. Giornale
Di Arona2433 details how the city greenery's maintenance is in a state of emergency due the chronic lack of funding. The article concludes how private citizens have started to maintain portions of the city's greenery closer to their homes. 4.000 parking slots at Novara shall soon be converted from free parking space to toll parking space. A revenue-raising exercise? A measure to pass on a more green and pollution-free city to future generations, administrators contend.
In recent years, however, Novara's city hall has funneled a flurry of millions into a sporting hall venture that has turned into a sour financial and legal black hole: city pride and promotion were the priority.
The town of Borgomanero (Italy, 21.000 residents) announces the installation of fourteen new speed traps by 2013; administrators issue a declaration of pursuit of higher good for the protection of powerless pedestrians, frightened mommies and tottering elderly trying to negotiate infernal traffic. More speed traps are thus added in 2014. Giornale Di Arona, May 27, 2016, p.37. Napoli Nel Caos 2013: no page. 2433 26 July 2013:9. 2431 2432
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In spite of legal prohibitions in place the thwart mafioso hijacking of public contracts, it seems the speed trap deal is underway between the city hall and 'fiduciary societies' representing undisclosed parties 2434: another glorious publicprivate synergy.
For the same 'noble' reasons, Milan also announces seven new speed traps to be activated in March 20142435:“If we annoy people, blessed be the Lord.”.
In Milan, such is the flurry of tickets speed traps mill that the city hall had to pay for 3.000 monthly hours of overtime so that the avalanche of tickets could be processed cutting a few corners in matters of due process of law: citizens could see their speed ticket delivered months or even years after the event. Although this might mar the sovereign citizen's chance to fight back, case-law is on the city hall's side2436.
Are incensed mobs likely to storm government buildings demanding retribution? Should lynch parties topple altars and hurl cherished symbols down a lavatory? How could they:”If a man isn’t willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he’s no good. ” (Ezra Pound when he was arrested for treason in 1945); August 1st 2016, Herbert Ministries publishes a YouTube video titled “Christianity that doesn't cost anything is worthless”.
Myths forewarn about the danger of rash judgments, and urge to hold no 2434 2435 2436
Giornale Di Arona, April 18, 2014:25. ASCA, March 3, 2014. Il Giorno, October 1, 2014.
1952
grudges so that reconciliation may unfold. Pencil-necked sweat-hogs are probably busy watching soccer on TV; or making emotionally supercharged statements about themselves as they listen to mimeographed, commemorative guff that involves blaming deceased tyrants or worshiping heroes who spurt sacred blood from their mangled bodies.
Italian Provincia Di Novara installed another set of speed traps to police streets around the town of Trecate 2437: some denounce the usual revenue-raising exercise, whereas administrators -with “ languid but good eyes and a frightened look with a voice trembling with indignation” - rhapsodize about the countless lives such speed traps helped save:”If we annoy people, blessed be the Lord”.
As it often happens in such cases, however, the speed trap system is “operated by private companies”: skillful reaganite synergy between the public and private sector, or nepotistic mafioso scheme? It is difficult not to recall divine philosopher Rousseau:”the burden of the laws; this burden so welcome that the most proud won't blush to bear as they're meant to bear no other”.
In France, L'agence Nationale Du Traitement Automatisé Des
Infractions estimates that speed traps are likely to generate 700 million revenue in 2012 (639 million in 2011)2438. In spite of seemingly endless streams of revenue, cities -or the State- are often on the brink of financial collapse, and increasingly unable to supply essential services, or to maintain existing infrastructures:"All right, 2437 2438
Giornale Di Arona, January 3, 2014:14. Les Radars...2012: no page.
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but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!" ( John 8:7).
An entire cottage industry might be at work, as in the province of Novara (Italy) police union CONSAP denounces (Sept. 1, 2012) sanctions against police officers guilty of not having made provision for enough traffic violations in a given time frame2439; on the other end of the gamut, cities such as Genova (Italy) share a percentage of the loot granting salary increases to overzealous officers helping to increase the “turnover” (literally) related to traffic violations 2440.
According to Il Giorno2441 only 5,6% of Italian towns and provinces have reported to State authorities how the billionaire loot of street tickets is actually spent. In 2017, the collapsing state budget leaves State authorities no choice but to declare “open season” on motorists in Italy. New legislative provisions leave local administrations (cities, provinces etc) freer than ever to crank the handle (speed traps etc) to raise revenue.
Are Italy or France uniquely nasty places? What about the United States?
The December 4, 2011 involving Terrance Huff was a faithful application of the tactics denounced by Judge Reagan in the 2005 case. Huff was stopped for a non-existent traffic infraction. He was subjected to the “rolling no” routine. When he balked over a search and asked if he could go, Huff was told that his passenger looked "nervous" -- a lie, naturally -- and that this supposedly gave Reichert reasonable suspicion that a search would be justified. Huff was also told that his car would have to be impounded if he didn’t consent, and that he would be given a “ride” by the officer (which would have 2439 2440 2441
Sanzioni Ad Agenti...2012: no page. Gatti 2009: no page. March 26, 2015:22.
1954
meant putting him under arrest). -...-There was nothing novel about the treatment Huff experienced: The Collinsville PD conducts dozens of identical stops each week, and roughly half of its operating budget comes from seizures of cash and property through civil asset forfeiture. Despite – or perhaps owing to -- the fact that Reichert was fired twice after being put on the so-called Brady List (a roster of police officers whose documented dishonesty disqualifies them from testifying in court) he is in charge of instructing other Collinsville officers in the dark arts of manufacturing “probable cause” for vehicle searches. -...- The stretch of freeway patrolled by Reichert falls under the jurisdiction of four law enforcement agencies – the city police, the municipal police from nearby St. Claire, the Madison County Sheriff’s Office, and the Illinois Highway Patrol. This makes it a highly coveted territory for predatory police officers hungry for a slice of the asset forfeiture plunder. -...-The second film includes footage of a recent deposition in which Reichert admits to planting narcotics evidence on vehicles as a “training” exercise. (Grigg 2012: no page). Rhetoric to support the exercise reads alike since the invention of speed traps, without reflecting the rising technological safety level in the automobile industry (most vehicles are nowadays equipped with airbags, ABS/EBD braking systems for example): sobbing mommies, whose sobbing we couldn't possibly bear to hear; crippled teenagers, whose plight would have us sulk; angry daddies, whose stare we couldn't possibly bear; swarms of reckless, drunk or murderous drivers, and their countless victims that increase with every news report (as the heckling of Italian association ASAPS confirms):“ languid but good eyes and a frightened look with a voice trembling with indignation”.
'Scientific studies' are also providentially making the case for more speed traps, for sweet mommies do are scared, and tottering elderly do find impossible to negotiate infernal traffic: quantum entanglement, indeed. At Milan, a sweet pregnant mommy and her precious child die in a traffic accident: the city hall 1955
installs seven new speed-traps “burning with determination to even up the score”. Over 9.100 speed tickets are issued daily 2442: mommies, children and absolute good, what a return on investment.
Readers may think that sweet mommies represent ultimate values. Yet at Naples, a big tree falls killing a 40yo woman as she passes by in her car 2443. Forensic evidence suggests the city hall had already been notified that tree posed a threat. A city employee has been identified as possibly holding responsibility for ignoring the report: readers may easily picture him shivering in angst fearing judgment, and hoping for reconciliation:"All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!" (John 8:7). Always at Naples, in 2006 a tottering lamppost had fallen, thus killing a woman as she passed by on her moped. Instead of burning with determination to even up the score, meek administrators politely opt for sloppy seconds and awkward fatalities as a way of explanation.
Apparatchiki, kleptocrats and other panjandrums find ample shelter behind this or that excuse for presumed absolute good:
Or mark how D'Espremenil, who has his own confused way in all things, produces at the right moment in Parlementary harangue, a pocket Crucifix, with the apostrophe: "Will ye crucify him afresh?" Him, O D'Espremenil, without scruple;−−considering what poor stuff, of ivory and filigree, he is made of! (Carlyle 1837: no page). Of course, as Arona's and Borgomanero's case explain, great discretion is advised,
2442 2443
ANSA, May 29,2014. Corriere Del Mezzogiorno, June 10, 2013.
1956
lest tourists stop flocking to cities turned into speed-trap minefields, thus stopping the business flow directed to local shops and suchlike.
In 1983, stupendous Pope John Paul II visited Nicaragua. The Pope's conservative political views clashed with the local left-wing ambiance (Sandinismo, liberation theology, and so forth), and he was booed. After pleading unsuccessfully with the crowd to keep quiet, the Pope -like D'Espremenil- went back to the myth: he uttered in his melodious baritone voice “Jesus Cristo” several times.
Booing John Paul II then was the equivalent of jeering the beloved myth, and its petrified characters. This applies to all circumstances. If one points out how mister immigration amnesty or mister homeland first are just scandal-ridden phonies, then one's personality has to be disordered, for one does not care about either homeland, or poor illegal immigrants one has to 'save' from ultimate doom:”the brand or product benefit is integral to the story. When it’s woven so deeply into the narrative that people can’t tell the story without mentioning it.”.
Finally, the motor-vehicle- related healthcare costs purportedly skyrocket; ought the compassionate all-seeing eye of the welfare State not stop the carnage? Should the nanny State not suffer the critiques of its ungrateful flock as any savior -who knows best anyways- would do? If only naysayers looked inside, and listened to their hearts before casting harsh judgments... Should the providence State not reluctantly pocket whatever accessory benefit in the process in order to fund this, that or another social alchemy scheme? 1957
In the background – as usual- loom blurred images (“pictorial representation of psychic processes”2444) of heroes reciting salient paragraphs from bowdlerized history books; of divine saviors torn apart in agony to redeem the brutish flock with the blessed blood flowing from their pierced bodies; of entire galleries of petrified myths and obtuse allegories that constitute the true, ultimate source of foundational legitimacy:
Lincoln is a little more subtle, as his “of the people, by the people, for the people” refers obliquely to the Preamble to the Constitution. And, in one of those interesting circles of influence that so fascinate literature professors, King alludes to Lincoln’s speech: “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.” The allusion is done by the use of the oldfashioned, even biblically styled word “score.” And the point of allusion, rather than simple reference, is that it enables a writer to bring in the authority of another work without having to stop and say “as X says” (blatant reference is usually the mark of an insecure speaker or writer). Allusion also allows the person making the allusion to use those words as his or her own while still adopting a previously discovered solution to a rhetorical problem (i.e., how do I convince people of this, whatever it is), and it is a kind of a wink to the audience, saying “you and I know what this is, so we’re together on this one.” (Drout 2006:50). As well, the many campaigns to goad the public into buying more -and bigger- vehicles benefiting from (direct or indirect) public subsidies may play a role in the volume of traffic and related accidents, but here the emphasis is on all those 'mommies of three and daddies of two' working for the automobile industry: can't the protester see their job depends on just that? ”Go and try to look inside his heart you can find your own mistakes try to hide them thinking -...- but he can read them
2444
Jung, cit. in Angelo 1992:74.
1958
in your faceâ&#x20AC;?. Wouldn't it be much nicer to turn the page to sports, rather than inflicting emotional agony upon them? What if one of them had a gastrointestinal/neurological syndrome, or threatened to self-destruct as a result of such insensitive remarks? â&#x20AC;&#x153;languid but good eyes and a frightened look with a voice trembling with indignationâ&#x20AC;?.
Alternatively, could an invocation to preserve the social body's cohesion be more presentable than this tasteless, infantile pathetic imagery, perchance? And wouldn't this, that or the other welfare/social alchemy scheme suffer from a fall in public revenue from property, sale, fines and road taxes associated with the automobile industry?
As well, a growing percentage of motorists slips into old age at unprecedented levels, but it'd be highly rude to link the image of nice, harmless grannies and grandpas with traffic problems in any way, shape or form. In recent years, orderly Japan has experiencing skyrocketing rates of crime perpetrated precisely by elderly citizens. Last, in Italy and other countries according to newscasts, unskilled immigrants -often illegal and best counted by the hundreds of thousands- are getting driving licenses, often through rogue rackets and without mandatory training: a topic best left alone. What if one of them started gasping for air mortally offended by such remarks? Isn't the precious human soul on the compulsive lookout for psychological states everywhere?
The 'daddy and mommy' strategy can work regardless of the topic at 1959
hand. â&#x20AC;&#x153; Languid but good eyes and a frightened look with a voice trembling with indignationâ&#x20AC;? may have the public ire, sulk or weep irrespective of who or what chances to be at stake at a given moment.
The Italian press over the decades offered several examples of scandals involving huge quantities of adulterated food of various kinds (meat, wine, cheese...). In some cases, the news is kept vague in the alleged intent to shelter the industry segment (cheese industry, food industry etc) from unreasonable scares that may easily cost thousands of jobs, trusting the justice system pledging to report the investigation's outcome at a later date in order not to violate this, that or the other sacred liberties the potential culprits are entitled to; the item is typically never heard of again.
Alternatively, the news can explode denouncing the venue (for example a given supermarket chain, or shopping mall such as the 2013 scares) and the kind of adulterated food in detail as it happened with the 2013 scares about horse meat and chocolate cakes. The equally straightforward explanation offered to the simpleton is that the danger of one more brother, compatriot, comrade,
tovarish, common
humanity fellow (or any other member of such artificial kin groups) getting sick, and possibly risking his life after consuming adulterated food, supersedes all other frivolous considerations.
Considerations put forth to excuse what essentially amounts to criminal behavior (criminal lack of control and/or thorough criminal 1960
intent to sell
adulterated, potentially harmful if not lethal food seeking unjust profit). Of course, any ricochet about stock market values of said companies -and ensuing profits or losses- is merely accidental. Explanations are interchangeable; it is legitimate to wonder on which ground exactly do media decision-makers choose which show to put up.
Does it involve only minor news regarding adulterated food, for example? Of course not. Recent scandals (so-called climategate2445) have undermined the global warming apocalypse movement, too, as propelled mostly by the multibillionaire industry it fuels and the covetousness of those profiting from it feeding back massaged or unreliable data to support 'the cause':
the practice standards that science currently employs in self-policing misconduct have come to resemble the minimal juridical standards of practice that other professions employ. -...- In fact, something is wrong with the practices of many scientists, and misconduct in science occurs in many instances, although scientists might not admit this to be the case” (VonRosenberg 1996: vi, 60). [The Piltdown Man was] merely the result of an artificial 2445
“Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data. The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory.” (Delingpole 2009: no page). “An environmental start-up backed by Al Gore's venture capital firm aims to take advantage of coming U.S. climate change legislation by helping companies like Coca Cola and even cities cut pollution. ” (Lawsky 2009: no page).”The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders. Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research. ” (Rose 2010: no page).”SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. ” (Leake 2009:no page). Scientists with the Scot Polar research institute add:”Dr Poul Christoffersen said: “It is regrettable that the claimed drastic reduction in the extent of ice in Greenland has created headline news around the world. There is to our knowledge no support for this claim in the published scientific literature.” ( Research News 2011: no page).
1961
construction, a hoax, it is worth remembering that the existence of archaic figures that were neither obviously human nor nonhuman is unquestioned within evolutionary theory. (Goulden 2009:59). In New Zealand, the global warming scare prompted the adoption of a so-called “fart tax” to balance the emissions of greenhouse gases by ruminants. The millions the Nation-State Moloch pocketed in this fashion were supposed to be invested in vaguely defined “research”. Should the nanny State not suffer the critiques of its ungrateful flock as any savior -who knows best anyways- would do? If only naysayers looked inside, and listened to their hearts before casting harsh judgments... Should the providence State not reluctantly pocket whatever accessory benefit in the process in order to fund this, that or another social alchemy scheme?
Reaganite public-private synergies are ubiquitous: the providence State is always serving the best of all causes so that oceans could finally turn to lemonade, and mountains to polenta in a never-ending spring of social alchemy. The secretary general of the province of Novara Princiotta (over euro 212.000 of yearly salary, plus a shower of collateral appointments and tokens) - who had served under both left- and right-wing administrations- is arrested 2446.
He purportedly was part of a racket that saw private companies direct money to him in order to be granted easy permits, and the access to public subsidies (3 million) for bogus waste-management services and projects. President of
Provincia Di Novara Sozzani pretends to be flabbergasted; he chastises his former
2446
La Stampa, May 8, 2014.
1962
subordinate, whom -opposition parties are quick to point out- Sozzani had valiantly defended until he was arrested: well after he had been investigated for possible wrongdoings.
Meanwhile, the apostles of another revelation imitate fellow experts in the stock-market and finance realm; they wisely invest in 'green' stocks, invent 'ecological' services before issuing press releases, studies etc that will make them profitable. So profitable is the “green sector” that a new word was coined in the 1990s to identify a ballooning work force as “green collars”.
The world's end approaches: farewell to the hysterical images of the burning furnace of Cold War's impending 'nuclear holocaust'. Now the...burning furnace of global warming that will bring 'the big chill' and a host of other ills about in the latter days rules supreme. Alternatively, it may be gadflies are a new Hallaj, Cassandra etc the 'bad guys' unjustly maligned, whom people should defend at any cost before they grieve over ignoring their warning issued in disinterested nondualistic rapture.
It hadn't escaped analysts how radical left-wing activists bereft of a cause since the collapse of the Soviet empire smoothly transited to environmentalism that already served as a fig leaf during the Cold War, much as the USA sponsored by proxy dissident groups in the Communist world under the umbrella of human rights, freedom of speech and religious worship.
1963
The 'green scare' extravaganza has also proven -according to endless scandals newspapers relay- that at the end of the rainbow of ecological fantasy, healing etc sold to the masses, some at least (politicians, regulators, contractors...) have found their pot of gold in the exact same way as the irresponsible logging companies, oil cartels and rogue industrialists have on the other end of the spectrum.
Of course, to castrate any critique is enough to play footage of the last ecological disaster committed journalists mysteriously stopped covering, a soundtrack of babies and whales out-crying one another, while transgressors bat their wet eyelashes in the miffed public's direction to signify "All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!" (John 8:7).
Percival Lowell - the eccentric millionaire, orientalist, diplomat and scientist- championed -in the late Victorian era - the idea that Mars was inhabited. In fact, he could observe through his modern telescope the famous “canals”, a vast irrigation system Martians had allegedly built to fight global drought by bringing water from the planet's ice caps. In 1896, Lowell also announced he had observed “the Venus spokes”: surface traces on Venus that possibly announced a(nother) alien civilization. Because Venus' surface is not visible from Earth, some contend Lowell might have seen a reflection of his own retina.
In the early XIX century, Mormon founder Smith had already declared the Moon (and the Sun according to Brigham Young in 1870) to be inhabited. The 1964
belief was still common currency among Mormons in 1892, when a publication wrote:
Nearly all the great discoveries of men in the last half century have, in one way or another, either directly or indirectly, contributed to prove Joseph Smith to be a Prophet. "As far back as 1837, I know that he said the moon was inhabited by men and women the same as this earth, and that they lived to a greater age than we do -- that they live generally to near the age of 1000 years. "He described the men as averaging near six feet in height, and dressing quite uniformly in something near the Quaker style. (Huntington 1892:263-4). [ Seventh-Day Adventist co-founder] Sister White was in very feeble health [in 1846], and while prayers were offered in her behalf, the Spirit of God rested upon us. We soon noticed that she was insensible to earthly things. This was her first view of the planetary world. After counting aloud the moons of Jupiter, and soon after those of Saturn, she gave a beautiful description of the rings of the latter. She then said, ‘The inhabitants are a tall, majestic people, so unlike the inhabitants of earth. Sin has never entered here.’ (cit. In Loughborough 2013:143). In the allegorical vision -so dear to Victorian and Belle Epoque intellectuals- of biological evolution in terms of growth, maturation, decline and fall, not only was global drought denounced as the cause of the Martians' plight, but it was announced the same fate would befall the Earth:
To understand where this idea of unrelenting aridification came from and why it would have been so palatable, indeed irresistible, to Lowell’s audiences, we need look no further than the tropes typically used to characterize Earth’s own desert regions at that time. In comparing Mars’ landscape to Earth’s deserts, Lowell easily assumed the vocabulary that was then widely used to characterize much of the Middle East. Colonial administration throughout the region depended on a narrative of deforestation, aridification, and desert growth to wrest control of natural resources from local populations (Doyle Lane 2006:149). 1965
There was even an attempt to ignite the foundling reflex. In December 1900, the Lowell observatory alerted the scientific community about a shaft of light being projected from Mars to the Earth for seventy minutes: was that the Martians' desperate cry for help? Shouldn't earthlings rise as one and champion the frail outer space creatures in the name of interplanetary kinship?
While the credibility of Lowell's conclusions rapidly evaporated over a few decades, it shall be emphasized how he was a scientist abreast of his times' latest technology/science. (Some) scientists and crowds alike made considerable emotional investment in imagining Martians in the guise of an earthly traveling freak show; or a living historical exhibit, just as Mormon co-founders Smith and Young had imagined the case would be for the Moon and Sun.
This aspect hadn't escaped some, however subconsciously, for a poem published in 1910 in a Oklahoma newspaper recited:â&#x20AC;?Have you anything to brag on that we haven't pretty Mars?â&#x20AC;?2447. The fad was so popular that -in the 1890s- a reallife producer of patented medicines2448 published an advertisement booklet (Mars
Gazette)2449: a pedlar from Earth travels to Mars offering stomach tonics to eager Martians, whose peculiar diet routinely causes huge discomforts.
2447
Franz no date:lecture 1. Arlington Chemical Company, N.Y (USA). 2449 Some discard the same as a fake fabricated in recent decades. Worldcat, however, lists it as published in the 1890s. Furthermore, the same is included in the Lowell Observatory collection. Lowell and his assistants in fact relentlessly collected articles and materials from all over the world, which related to Mars, the canals and related items. If it is in Lowell's collection, then it certainly cannot be a recent fabrication because Lowell died in 1916. 2448
1966
The vagary, again, was so popular that litterateurs had already boarded the bandwagon: H.G. Wells, E.R. Burroughs, C.S. Lewis and a slew of others. Buck
Rogers, Flash Gordon: the Mars craze had literally set the public imagination ablaze with outer spaces threats, and escapades into otherness outer space epitomized.
During the Belle Epoque Mars craze, esteemed scientists and notable gentlemen observed the famous canals on Mars taking the form of Hebrew letters denoting the name of god (shajdai) in 18952450. In 1909, the New York Times2451 announces that:â&#x20AC;?Prof. Percival Lowell, recognised as the greatest authority on the subject, declares there can be no doubts that living beings inhabit our neighbor worldâ&#x20AC;?.
It was immediately conjectured Martians could descend from Israel's lost tribes. Nothing changes: in our day, elated conspiracy theorists pretend to see Egyptian hieroglyphs representing helicopters and rockets. The looking glass of the human psyche just projects endless warped images of itself.
Global drought (warming, or whichever re-branding might occur) and floods (or the category of natural disasters that includes earthquakes, tidal waves and so forth) have been haunting humans since the dawn of time. Buddhism, too, had appropriated the motif: 2450 2451
San Francisco Chronicle, June 2. December 9, in the Lowell Observatory collection.
1967
Lack of rain and the subsequent heat cause the appearance of the second sun, which in turn give rise to the third sun, and so forth (AN IV, 100-5). (Somaratne, ME6101 no date :Theravada Cosmology). Every epoch's arch-trickster is credited with possibly altering the climate:
Witches, Satanism, black magic —these are among many concepts recognized by numerous people back then and today in many parts of the world. The uses to which magic might have been put included much feared form of harmful power to raise storms, conjure mists, and destroy crops by hailstorms and other means -...-. Little by little, out of the old conviction —pagan and Christian— of evil interference in atmospheric phenomena evolved the belief that some people may use malign sorcery to set off whirlwinds hail, frosts, floods and other destructive weather events. -...- Nevertheless, the popular belief in the efficacy of magic was much too strong to be ignored. -....- The popular fears were indeed real and significant. But it was only when authorities, bishops, inquisitors’ magistrates and lawyers, reversed legal procedures and embraced a new idea of witchcraft that enslaved minds even of sophisticated people. -...- It was in the late 14th century when magic and weather control became popular as a sign of heresy. As the fifteenth century progressed and the weather turned cooler, damper and more erratic across much of Europe, the most common response to climate deterioration were fires of the stakes. Witches were burned for causing severe thunderstorms, hurricanes, crop diseases, hailing, droughts, floods, snowstorms. Climate visible turn for the worse has set off religious enthusiasm and zeal with tremendous craziness and irrationality. If there was unseasonable weather cold or hot, wet or dry, frost or snow, hail or thunder or heavy winds, all these phenomena have been attributed the power of witchcraft. -...- During the late 14th and 15th centuries the traditional conception of magic was transformed into the idea of great conspiracy of witches to explain almost all climatic phenomena. (Kwiatrowska 2010:30-32). It is no surprise the imagery keeps sinking into discredit and yet springs up all over again in full glory re-branded to vindicate or embody the latest theories or fads.
However society's structure -and the thresholds of the scientific and 1968
social proper- may change, human mind's haunting vortexes remain the same, with the same stale images, petrified allegories and obtuse pathetic pleas being adjusted as little as the sociopolitical climate and the times allow. 1930 movie Just Imagine is set in then hypothetical 1980 New York: airplanes replace cars; numbers replace names; pills replace food; government-arranged marriages replace love; scantily clad dress codes replace the old-fashioned; Orwellian telecommunication and surveillance systems are everywhere; and test tube babies (be)gotten from an automatic counter replace birth. The then top-notch nod to airplanes as every dayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s commodity may today be replaced by spaceships or teleportation.
Test tube babies still get opponents and partisans to emote in a gigantomachy, whereby riveting operetta characters exchange fantastic punchlines, while movies such as Blade Runner keep the item apace by melting it with a new take on the Babel/megacity/quest theme.
The Japanese 2004 movie Kyashan re-elaborates the plot of a 1973 cartoon, which in turn re-elaborated the fashionable item of the fight against Fascist regimes. In 1973 a lone hero-android fights the endless armies of a murderous robot-tyrant â&#x20AC;&#x201C;with Mussolini's body type yet with an uncanny Hitlerian stare and three robot-helpers looking like NSDAP honchos- on a world domination binge under a clumsily disguised swastika as emblem.
In 2004 the basic plot is enriched with the then posh fad of stem-cell
1969
research2452 on a ever-green backdrop of garrison state, genocide, ecological and military mayhem. The series Visitors (1983) had already re-styled the obsession with NSDAP to fit within the improbable sci-fi scenario of murderous reptilian aliens from outer space on a treacherous visit to Earth.
It isn't a solitary event, either. Back in the Middle Ages, when the wave of courtly love swept across Europe, it was instantly adapted to suit religious needs. Saint Mary -up until that time in the devotional limelight- took instantly centerstage as divine ersatz of the more mundane dames the aspiring knight adored. The public has never enough of 'you know who' and 'you know what'. Is that the odd choice of amateurs who don't know any better, or that of professionals who know exactly what they're doing?
But it goes beyond movies. The â&#x20AC;&#x153;Canadian Nazi Partyâ&#x20AC;? that terrorized minorities -and spurred the creation of several minority vigilante groups (such as N3)- in the 1960s had only a few, inoffensive members: at its core stood a (former) law enforcer paid by a powerful minority lobby. The infiltrator would later disclose his activities in a lengthy Maclean's article2453. The outrage that band of lunatics could stir was sufficient to bring about the legislative changes the 'creative' minority lobby coveted. Another infiltrator the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Much as popular culture soon appropriated organ transplants as the scientitific ersatz of mythical health and youth fountains, so it did with stem-cell research, once again touted as 'scientific miracle' that would soon eradicate so many disabilities and diseases. In 2012, Italian regulatory agency AIFA put a stop to stem-cell therapies at the famed Brescia hospital. As Il Giorno reports on 9 May 2013, a group of researchers and physicians at Brescia university issued a scathing judgment on stem-cell therapies as based upon dubious clinical evidence and scientific methods, and resting upon the emotional investment patients and their families make in such dodgy treatments. 2453 Garrity 1966. 2452
1970
fielded also played pivotal roles stirring far-right groups.
There is a deluge of such news: media comment regarding U.S alleged 'White supremacist' radio host – and possible rouser of so-called 'racist' mobs- Hal Turner that “At the hearing, prosecutors acknowledged that for several years Turner was a paid FBI informant, saying in a letter to his lawyers he had supplied information on "right-wing white nationalist and white supremacist groups."” 2454.
The permit holder for a 'neo-nazi' rally -which disquiets minorities in Florida- is a FBI informant2455:
The actual number of bona fide racist, neo-Nazi skinheads in Denver is probably under 25. At the time a Kansas City KKK "group" made national news in 1988 with its plans for a public TV show it had only two members. Speculation had ranged as high as a hundred and rumors of alleged KKK vandalism and cross-burnings spread through the community. -...-In 1984 a terrifying right-wing Halstead, KS, organization with the creative name of the "Farmer’s Liberation Army" was finally determined to have one member, founder Keith Shive. Anti-racist groups took the organization very seriously and references to it appeared in the national press. -...-A creative trickster with access to a photocopy machine can create havoc in a community with the help of a properly "sensitized" local media on the watch for witches to burn. -...- In February 1979 one "Michael James Guttman" applied for a permit to hold a neo-Nazi rally in the shadow of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.-...- An investigation revealed that the man posing as James Guttman may have been using a stolen identification card. Philadelphia police said that Mordechai Levy, associated with the Jewish Defense League, had once been arrested in New York City using information from this same stolen card.(Wilcox 1994:15-16,70-1). As Bob James documents, Andrews persistently denounced 2454 2455
North Bergen...2009:no page. Orlando Sentinel, February 15, 2007.
1971
proposals to imitate [French anarchist terrorist] Ravachol, believing (with good cause) that they were mostly raised by police provocateurs. (Sparrow 2015:no page). Leaders of supposedly 'racist' German party NPD the government wants to ban at all costs deferring to superseding values are revealed in court to have been government infiltrators for ages2456: the investigation stops out of embarrassment; “The German government’s concerted bid to rid itself of a neo-Nazi party accused of promoting race attacks and tarnishing the country’s international image collapsed in farce yesterday. ” according to another source2457.
F.J “Frank” Collin, the leader of Chicago-based National Socialist Party
Of America that alarmed Jewish neighborhoods with defiant demonstrations, was sentenced for child molestation in 1979: “Frank Collin was the son of Max Cohen, a Jewish concentration camp survivor ”2458.
Formerly convicted Italian right-wing radical – and in 2008 member of the European Parliament- R. Fiore is allegedly mentioned in a European Parliament report investigating xenophobia as having been a British intelligence operative since the 1980s2459.
Other prominent members of Italian radical right groups were also associated with secret services and paramilitary units -such as GLADIO- the United The Telegraph July 16, 2002. Quest To Ban...2003: no page. 2458 According to the Southern Poverty Law Center. 2459 Ford Report, 1991, par. 2.12.11:”Italian far right terrorist exile Roberto Fiore -...-an agent of British Intelligence section MI6 since the early 1980s.” (Ford 1992:35). 2456 2457
1972
States and Britain directed. Telling true or false stories makes no difference as far as the public's reaction is concerned: hyperreality steals the day.
After the 2002-3 â&#x20AC;&#x153;farceâ&#x20AC;?, German authorities are still relying on the same discredited scarecrow. They can count on the masses' attention deficit and infinite propensity to bait for certain rhetoric hook, line and sinker:
Former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder tried to ban the party for fomenting violence against minorities. But the Supreme Court threw out the ban because the government's case rested on inflammatory statements made by government informants (Jordan 2006: no page, emphasis added). In fact, CHRC [ Canadian Human Rights Commission] employees have been active members of neo-Nazi organizations for years, and have published countless anti-Semitic, anti-gay and anti-black comments online. CHRC employees have admitted to this under oath. On the same day Monfette testified about the hacking, CHRC investigator Dean Steacy testified there were no guidelines about what CHRC staff could do using their online Nazi memberships. (Levant 2009: no page). Commission investigators [Canadian Human Rights Commission] are not above working alongside the activists who bring hate complaints, either, and they have been known to use entrapment - using assumed names to post racist messages on websites, then charging the sites' webmasters for promoting hate if the phoney messages aren't removed fast enoughextnote. In one case, CHRC investigators even hacked into a private citizen's Wi-Fi account so they could post damning messages without it being obvious they were using government computers. (Gunter 2012: no page). It's not always about 'funny' or ' harmless' scares, however. Recent evidence2460 suggests that the British purposefully lured third-party civilian ships in extnote
In this case -a very common occurrence over the internet â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the perturber and the herald of the pack's oneness; the savior and the clown are one, literally, as it is the case with multiple personality disorders. (note of this writer). 2460 Greenhill 2008, no page.
1973
water patrolled by German submarines during WWI in order to trigger incidents.
Also, the famous U.S civilian ship Lusitania2461 German submarines sunk in 1915 -thus triggering a wave of germanophobia and moral outrage that some credit as major event leading to the U.S intervention- did in fact carry war materials to be supplied to Germany's warring enemies2462.
Sometimes we need a story more than food in order to live. They tell us about who we are, what is possible for us, what we might call upon. (R.N. Remen in 2005). The case of Katyn, too, was pinned on Fascist regimes until Soviet sources in 1990 finally acknowledged the massacre of Polish soldiers as a Soviet misdeed, just as Fascist regimes had originally claimed:”With a polished scrawl,
“There are other perplexing facts about the Lusitania as well. For some reason a new captain, William Thomas Turner, was placed in charge for the return trip from New York. Turner flagrantly violated all the formal sailing orders given him in New York. Contrary to these instructions, he sought out rather than avoided the highly dangerous zone in which the vessel was actually sunk. Again, contrary to orders, he neither increased his speed nor followed a zigzag course when in the general zone of danger. Did captain Turner receive a subsequent set of instructions by wireless altering his original orders? Why was Turner met by Churchill upon his arrival at the pier after his rescue and taken directly to King George V and knighted? Was there a British governmental design to invite a submarine attack?” (Connors 1966, no page). In 1966 this conjecture might still have been discarded as coming from a moral outcast making excuses for German crimes, or some journalistic appeal of this kind. 2462 “What must be remembered is that DEFINITELY aboard the ship, in the enlarged forward hold, was a total of 1,248 cases of LIVE 3" shrapnel shells (four shells per case) destined for use by the Royal Artillery, as well as two consignments of unrefrigerated "butter" and "cheese" that together weighed nearly 90 tons and were both destined for the Royal Navy Weapons Testing Establishment in Essex. Curiously, both of those consignments were insured at the special government insurance rate! Why insure rancid dairy produce?! Even more curious is the fact that having got those consignments covered, the insurance was subsequently never claimed! -...-Incidentally, On June 3rd 1915, The New York Times ran a front page story reporting a visit by the German Ambassador, Count Bernstorff, to President Wilson. On page two, there is a bye-line; SHELLS ON THE LUSITANIA. Bernstorff laid a copy of the ship's manifest in front of Wilson and then quoted direct from a copy of Bethlehem Steel's shipping note, that "the consignment of 1,250 cases of shrapnel was in fact 5,000 shrapnel shells, filled; and that the total weight of this consignment was 103, 828 lbs". Bernstorff left a memo of these and other figures with Wilson as proof and called Wilson's attention to the "deliberately incorrect marking" of this consignment as "Non-Explosive Shrapnel", when it was known (and proven) to have been filled shrapnel shells. Count Bernstorff seems to have been remarkably accurately informed! ” ( A Deadly Cargo...no date:no page). 2461
1974
Glass drew diagrams of meetings that never occurred attended by people who didn't exist talking about events that never happened. â&#x20AC;?2463.
For decades, however, it all seemed a ludicrous conspiracy theory, as in all such cases:
LUSITANIA INCIDENT. May 7, 1915, incident in which a German submarine sank the Lusitania, a passenger liner, off the Irish coast and took nearly 1,200 lives, including many prominent Americans. In its aftermath, the British government unleashed anti-German propaganda in the United States in an unsuccessful attempt to initiate American intervention in World War I, but this action did stir up intense Germanophobia in the United States. A strong propaganda tool was the British reproduction of the Lusitania medal, which was privately issued in Germany after the May 1915 sinking. These were used on posters to demonstrate Germany's heartless insensitivity toward the dead. In a diplomatic note to Secretary of State Bryan, the British ambassador lied by stating that the ship was not armed and Americans were not told about secret munitions on board nor the report commissioned by First Sea Lord Winston Churchill that outlined the public opinion advantages if a passenger line with prominent neutral passengers was sunk by the Germans. Americans believed the British lies, which, combined with poorly executed German propaganda in the United States, quickly destroyed proneutrality support. (Martin 2004:175, emphasis added). Psychopaths seem proud of their ability to lie. -...-one woman with a high score on the Psychopathy Checklist laughed and replied, "I'm the best. I'm really good at it, I think because I sometimes admit to something bad about myself. They'd think, well, if she's admitting to that she must be telling the truth about the rest. " She also said that she sometimes "salts the mine" with a nugget of truth. "If they think some of what you say is true, they usually think it's all true." (Hare 1993:47). The best lie is 90 percent true.(Lakhani 2008:47). Interestingly, this truth bias, or the tendency to believe even in cheap 2463
Leung 2003b:no page.
1975
talk, makes some sense.extnote The fact is that most people do tell the truth most of the time, in part because most of us have some degree of aversion to lying. (Chen&Krakovsky 2010:103). Liulevicius2464 for example on one hand resurrects (“recent historical research -...- detective work in the documents”) the specter of German atrocities during WWI detailing how German troops invading Belgium and Northern France in 1914 had executed 6.000 civilians; on the other, he liquidates the item claiming Germans took reprisals against “what they believed to be atrocities committed against German troops -...- often in fact cases of friendly fire”, a case of “mass hysteria”.
During the civil rights strife in the USA in the 1960s, government informants not only squealed, but played sinister roles in violent acts and murders committed under the auspices of violent racist organizations. In 1979 Greensboro (USA), a showdown between Communists and the KKK left five people dead. Such clash had been orchestrated by an informant profiled thus:
A reformed alcoholic and gambler, he was a loner. He joined the Klan out of curiosity -- he says, for the fellowship. His FBI file labels him "an extremist informant." Twice he was convicted of cross-burnings and violent night rides. He found his double role in meetings like this comfortable and exciting. (88 Seconds...: no page). On the other side of the civil rights fence in the U.S, the ambiance was
DeRue&Sytch (2015:unit 2) concur:“Dialogue followed by a request lead to 2.2-3.6x levels of compliance”. This dynamic applies in all sorts of circumstances. For example, tourists to noted havens of sex tourism across the world report how go-go girls/boys, street bums and bumettes approach foreign tourists (who are perceived as financially well-off) with cheap talk or bids for dialogue before they cut the chase and advertise their “services” to the prospective buyer. (note of this writer). 2464 2003:Total War. extnote
1976
somewhat peculiar as well:
As Houck tells it, “when Hosea [Williams] was around there were more racial overtones. I was harassed by the brothers,” he says, more bemused than bitter. Williams used to call Houck “white boy” or “cracker boy.” Much of this sparring was goodnatured, but sometimes it was not. At one SCLC staff retreat, [Afro-American civil rights leader] James Bevel’s lower impulses must have overcome his spiritual convictions. A great womanizer who sometimes described himself as a “political sexologist,” he had his sights set on a white woman, and he suddenly got up in Houck’s face and badgered him, “How’s it make you feel to see a nigger fucking a white woman?” In Chicago, Houck recalls, he came in for some misplaced anti-Semitic animus from local staffers who assumed that a fervent white enlistee in the black struggle had to be Jewish: “I thought we got rid of these Jew boys.” “It was hard being white in the movement,” Houck says today. But none of that has diminished his memories of Bevel. “I loved Bevel,” he says, and his face breaks out in a big grin. Such rituals of domination were “just the price you paid.” (Rieder 2008:59). In 1970s Italy, clusters of the secret services -in a web that involved mainstream politicians, U.S authorities, industrialists, 'hip' Masonic lodges etcengaged in proactive behaviour (bombs in train stations and so forth) to stampede the gullible masses into supporting the regime under the threat of alternatively 'black' or 'red' menaces.
The 'black' or 'red' threat is periodically resurrected -as of late 2014, supposed 'black' and 'red' terrorist networks would be at work in Italy- to foster confidence in a regime that -no matter how corrupt or inept- is always better than 'red' (left-wing) or 'black' (right-wing) insurrection.
Western governments aren't alone in breeding and fostering informants 1977
and operatives in risky operations in the pursuit of abstruse political machinations. The central Indian government groomed and enlisted a radical Sikh cleric to set up a political faction on their service to somewhat steer local politics in the Sikh homeland of Punjab.
Cleric Bhindranwale thought he had a “rendezvous with destiny”, however. His followers became enmeshed in a spiral of politicized violence -and ensuing retaliations- between factions in Punjab. It ended in a blood bath, and the military assault against a Sikh high place (the Golden Temple): Bhindranwale was ultimately killed in action. The period of riots and unrest left thousands dead on all sides, including Indira Gandhi, whom Sikh bodyguards killed in reprisal.
Belgian cabinet member -and self-proclaimed Socialist, Freemason, atheist and homosexual2465- Di Rupo in 1994 scandalizes the world refusing to shake hands with then Italian minister because -so he alleged- the Italian is a “fascist” and fascism must not be trivialized2466. He gets accolades from various politicians for embodying “shared values”.
2465 2466
BBC News, December 5, 2011. The party minister Tatarella belonged to had been recently created assembling various components, which included Italy's self-proclaimed “national right” (destra nazionale) party (Movimento Sociale Italiano). While some groups within the party did flirt with Fascist slogans and paraphernalia, the party as a whole was -on account of some damning evidence- the byproduct of U.S intelligence efforts after the war to foster a party they could use as a wedge in Cold War dynamics. The party mostly embodied a watered-down version of old school nationalism, never really flourished until the 1990s and then only as a pawn in political maneuvers to counter so-called 'secessionist' parties. Many popular names in the far-right included in top lists of hate by concerned minorities, however, did show up in investigations of secret subversive organizations such as GLADIO, STAYBEHIND and others. These covert paramilitary organizations -run and funded by U.S, British and so forth intelligence- were intended to carry on terrorism and subversion to serve 'the good cause' in case of Communist electoral victory (probable in the 1970s).
1978
While it was high time to take care of the catastrophic banking, Ponzi, trading, deficit and welfare problems (and ensuing crises) that loomed on the horizon, putting deceased tyrants on never-ending posthumous trials, and rewriting history books was the activity lawmakers seemed to find irresistible:”A great deal of dramatic time that could be put to more telling use is taken up with -...priggish monologues.”2467. In 1996 the same Belgian politician sinks in a investigation of vicious cases of pedophilia dragging the government along; in 2011, he is still at the top of Belgian politics as Prime Minister.
In the period immediately preceding a disastrous financial -hence social and economic- meltdown, the fabulous left-wing Spanish government electrified party liners getting busy with keeping the stupendous covenant inherited from war propaganda -and the sixties- with trail-blazing gay rights reforms.
Just before the economic collapse (none could foresee, of course), the left-wing Spanish government was also busy censoring (2004ss) Fascist Francoism and its horrors: extant landmarks celebrating the accursed regime were removed, and a systematic search after mass-graves of the purportedly innumerable victims of Francoism was initiated.
With unsurpassed irony, The Economist defined the 'great nation' of France (November 17, 2012) as “[economic] time bomb at the heart of Europe”, much as Serbia was nicknamed in the hectic years before WWI. Around 2013, 2467
Rexroth 1989:8.
1979
French left-wing President Hollande, whose popularity is in slow yet steady decline (23% of favorable votes according to polls 2468) as extramarital affairs are made public, receives an endorsement from prominent Jewish-French intellectual B.H. Levy 2469 regarding Hollande's renewed stance against -in Levy's terms- the rise in racism and antisemitism.
In September 2014, a book Hollande's disgruntled wife V. Trierweiler penned portrays the 'authentic' Socialist politician as making fun of the poor in private by calling them “sans dents” (the toothless), a comment that flies in the face of the numerous public performances of shared grief against inequalities, and pledges of allegiance to Robin Hood taxation Hollande routinely gives: being fluent in ”conversational emotion” is paramount. The ex-wife also described French President Hollande as “sans affect” (=incapable of feeling emotions), whereas other French media add “froid” (cold) and “autoritaire” (authoritarian).
Janusian thinking and differentiation (=to maintain a coherent sense of self as one is both enmeshed in contradictory situations, and prevents such situations from 'getting at one') make the personable savior that shepherds the meek horde in fusion look increasingly like Machiavelli's poster boy. This doesn't just apply to electioneering hacks, GESTAPO, Khmer Rouge or CEKA-NKVD thugs. Medical, religious, social or legal professionals are praised when they do not allow items from their professional life to 'get to them' as they preserve a well-fenced 2468 2469
Ipsos-Le Point poll published December 9, 2013 by French Le Point. Le Parisien, 5 January 2014.
1980
private sphere.
According to Reuters (August 22, 2014):
President Barack Obama delivered a somber statement on the death of American journalist James Foley after a video emerged showing Foley's grisly execution by Islamic State militants. Then Obama proceeded directly to a golf course to play 18 holes. No wonder the ancients imagined absolute compassion was the virtue most needed in a savior.
As well, all those images dealing with purity or impurity, such as being willing or unwilling to shake hands, hug, sit in the same room with etc, are part and parcel of the human psyche's grotesque obsessions. In 2013, Berlusconi's gesture of dusting the seat where an ideological foe (the journalist Travaglio) was sitting when exchanging places during a political broadcast, allegedly won him points in polls as a national election approached.
â&#x20AC;?Your presence has infected me already.â&#x20AC;?2470 says Theseus to his innocent son Hippolytus2471 who -in the tragedy- undergoes the suite of tribulations reserved to the savior-hero. Noble, virtuous yet unjustly maligned, Hippolytus is torn apart in death: he manages to forgive his tormentors. He's thus hailed as greatest among men; no less than goddess Artemis promises him reverence from future generations. Furthermore, some versions claim Aesculapius rises him from the dead so that he
2470 2471
While there is such a thing as contagion, here we see the concept extended to politicized narratives. Euripides Hippolytus 1055.
1981
may reincarnate as the god Virbius, much as Aeneas was deified as Jupiter Indigetes (local Jupiter)2472.
Baptist Pastor dr. Rotach, Adjunct Professor Of Psychology, adds that forgiving and wishing tormentors well is “supernatural”, the hallmark of god's sacred presence. Rotach possibly ignores how common this “no hard feelings” shtick might be: a 95yo Italian victim of a recent earthquake is evicted from her temporary accommodation: she claims to be “praying for those who hurt her so much”2473.
This shows the knee-jerk reactions associated with some 'image banks' were known and exploited by the ancients, so why would this knowledge no longer work in our day? First:
At both Athens and Trozen, which faced each other across the Saronic gulf, Aphrodite’s cult was closely linked with that of Hippolytos. -...On the south slope of the Akropolis, in the same area as the sanctuary of Aphrodite Pandemos (and perhaps identical to it) was a shrine of Aphrodite “at Hippolytos,” also known as the Hippolyteion. Here the hero received regular sacrifices at his tomb. At Trozen, on the other hand, Hippolytos was a local god whose sanctuary contained a shrine of the goddess, so that their relative status was inverted. (Larson 2007:123). The Hyppolitus myth is another rendition not only of the savior-hero dying through scourging and sparagmos to rise later to divine status, but also of what
appears to have been recorded in the 13th century before the Christian In Greek myth, people spring out of the Earth (autochthonous, from the very earth). In Latin, too, Homo and human derive from humus, soil. In Hebrew, Adam (“man”) is connected to adamah, ground. 2473 Corriere Della Sera, October 8, 2017. 2472
1982
era -...-. Two brothers, Anubis and Bata, live together along with the wife of Anubis who is unnamed. One day when the younger brother, Bata, returns to the house, the wife of Anubis tries to seduce him -...[then] she claims that she was beaten by Bata after she rebuffed his attempt to seduce her [the Egyptian “tale of two brothers”] “ (Dundes 2002:378-9). in both stories a man who spurns the goddess of love ends up having to face a bull sent by another god.-...-[in] Euripides' tragedy Hippolytus, and -...- the Ishtar-Gilgamesh episode” (Karahashi & Lopez-Ruiz 2006:97-100)2474. That's a very old story. Stramaglia 2475 in fact argues that a papyrus could be dated to the end of the Ptolemaic age (I century BCE), which contains a story that closely resembles Ovid's Pyramus and Thisbe, in turn reworked to become Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and many others. The same legend ( a història das
àrvores apaixonadas, the story of the trees who fell in love) is present in Parà (northern
Brazil,
Marajoara): the son and daughter of rival chieftains
(Nira&Murerè2476) first fell in love, poisoned themselves because they could not elope, then were reborn as two mangrove tree, whose root become one.
2474
Another parallel between Greek and Mesopotamian lore is present. Apollo's threat to Diomedes, who had mocked Aphrodite much as Gilgamesh had jeered Ishtar, aptly encapsulates the relationship between gods and men: “Don't set your sights on the gods. Gods are To humans what humans are to crawling bugs” (Iliad, 5:478). The Hebrew Bible follows suit. Yahweh is portrayed thus:”He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.” (Isaiah 40:22). Scouts report about the promised land:”We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them."” (Numbers 13:33). In the Ramayana, Hindu hero Rama rebuffs an ogress' advances: she thus complains to Ravana who abducts Rama's wife Sita in retaliation. 2475 “Nel complesso, pur con le sue peculiarità grafico-materiali, PMich inv. 3793 viene a collocarsi a pieno diritto nell'esigua schiera dei papiri letterari da Ossirinco databili al I a. C.7 Non meno che per la datazione, il reperto assume uno spiccato rilievo per il suo contenuto. Come infatti si cercherà di chiarire in quanto segue, il frammento Michigan presenta una narrazione in prosa assai vicina al celebre episodio di Piramo e Tisbe in Ovidio (Met. IV, 55-166), la cui versione appariva finora sostanzialmente isolata nella tradizione letteraria greco-latina. ” (2001:82). 2476 In another variant, Spanish conquerors kidnap Mureré to serve as oarsman. Nira then pleads with the gods that her tears may prevent further intruders from reaching her tribe. Her tears thus turn into Pororoca, a tidal wave.
1983
In no way, however, was Hippolytus a divine savior-hero like Dumuzi, Osiris, Orpheus, Dionysus and their innumerable clones; or a swashbuckling founder on a journey like Hercules or Theseus; his myth and figure kept to the fringe of the importance spectrum.
Rexroth comments:
speeches by Hippolytus and Theseus which reveal them as a prig and a dolt. -...- We return to the [ancient drama] down the ages because, down the ages, the characters return to us. They are the archetypes of our own ills. (1989:10-11, emphasis added). The myth is the mirror from which the ego can see itself reflected. It's a mirror with a schedule on it, a patterned mirror, and the ego sees itself in that reflex and knows where it is on the scoreboard. (Campbell&Boa 1989:94). A creative space, coupled with a kind word, genuine appreciation, the feeling of progress and achievementâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the forces that motivate us are the same throughout our lives. In the adult world, companies are pseudoparents, and they can be nurturing or quashing, enlightened or limiting.(Ariely 2016:25). The strategy to get the public all hot and bothered, to let them let off steam so that they can revert to their normal life is seen in the invariable sequence crisis-polemics-tax increases. Italian media recurrently ask why does fuel cost more today than when crude oil costed nearly twice as much?
A vast array of media go on crusades denouncing the gourmet dishes Italian parliamentarians hog by the tons in the fabulous settings of eateries reserved to their excellencies paying cents; the cisterns of cappuccino they consume; the
1984
princely bills and expenses they present for reimbursement; the many thousands of state cars (numbering 600.000 entailing a possible yearly expenditure of over euro 21 billion in some estimates2477) -often unregistered-, state airplanes, helicopters, chauffeurs and police at their disposal; the endless sexual, mafioso, embezzlement and corruption scandals; millionaire kickbacks magically transferred through several banks in minutes despite the maze of righteous due diligence provisions that make life difficult for the average user.
The government invariably promises draconian measures that shall decapitate the gods who failed, but it's bound by its very nature, and may only set up palavers leading to the establishment of committees, in turn called to report to commissions that will divulge the findings at a later conference hoping to find common ground between strings of concerned parties while armies of counselors, and the like, march on to facilitate the byzantine process. Redressing radical reforms pop out of the policy maker's hat, which are rarely ever heard of in a few months:â&#x20AC;?Often, we are wasting valuable time. Studies show that thinking too much can lead to suboptimal judgments.â&#x20AC;?2478.
Alternatively, the usual mawkish chicanery about the danger of rash judgments, choices that might entail suffering, and ensuing pantomimes unfolds. Victims scream; disgraced heroes go away dejected in spite of being the best of us deep down; sick daddies choke as the mob pillories them while their sweet child 2477
Parisi 2013: no page. The article details state cars in the service of a hydra of State and para-State authorities (at the national, regional, provincial and local level). 2478 Sharot 2011:22.
1985
looks on before fainting, and so forth. Shouldn't the horde leave the usual suspects off the hook in sentimental rapture? Only the pure at heart (innocent etc) can choke (shiver, gasp, weep, scream...) that way after all.
Beppe Grillo's party â&#x20AC;&#x201C; an electoral sensation in Italy in recent timesadvocates to make party allegiance mandatory, whereby parliamentarians are forbidden to turn coat, or to vote against their party's dictates: a quintessential blasphemy against the commonplace perception of (post-war western mass) democracy.
Party fidelity (fidelidade partidaria) was introduced by constitutional amendment n.1/69, and disciplined by law n. 5.682/71 under the authoritarian, right-wing military dictatorship in Brazil2479, whereas Grillo's men are -according to some analyses- mostly drawn from fringe radical and militant left-wing milieus.
Alternatively, clamored for laws to redress this, that or another iniquity get mysteriously lost in the byzantine administrative process, and never heard of again:â&#x20AC;?democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. â&#x20AC;? (W.Churchill, 1947). It is peculiar that the XVIII century, which ended in the blood bath and geopolitical catastrophe that was the French revolution, was nearly unanimously considered the century of reforms, reason and enlightenment.
2479
Abolished as the democratic regime took over, then reintroduced a few years later: divine irony.
1986
While the public gets into conniptions cheering some political actor or jeering another, new tax increases have been passed retroactively: the public is already paying without having any chance to debate, but can feel relieved by the tide of indignation that is nailing the clumsy, scandal-ridden and ineffectual policy maker who -by all accounts- did get those five extra tax billion...or was it nine...and now castigates tax evasion that -come think of it- is the root of all problems:
France's former budget minister, forced to resign after revelations he held a secret Swiss bank account, has allowed Swiss authorities to pass account details to French judges investigating him for fraud, Geneva's public prosecutor said on Wednesday. Jerome Cahuzac [ famous for his harangues against tax evasion] quit his post in charge of French state finances two weeks ago on the orders of President Francois Hollande. On Tuesday he admitted to holding 600,000 euros in a secret foreign account and said on his blog he was "caught in a spiral of lies". The scandal is a grave blow to the 10-month-old Socialist government as it struggles to fulfil election promises to right France's economy and stem rising unemployment.(Update 1 2013: no page). Threatening an escalation of the Cahuzac scandal, Swiss RTS TV reported on Sunday, citing banking sources, that the minister had sought to transfer 15 million euros ($20 million) from one Swiss account to another - far more than the 600,000 euros he said last week he had in an undeclared foreign account. (Update 2 2013: no page). The real culprit thus becomes the protester who lost everything in the periodical stock market crashes the fastidious 'all-seeing eye' of the nanny State -and its countless, overstaffed regulatory bodies- couldn't possibly foresee; the professional hooligans for lease, and their fashionable armbands; the silent majority that does not take responsibility for any of the many governments ruling over the decades; the grasshoppers busy singing during the summer, and panic-stricken as winter approaches; the indignados labeled 'parasites that cheat on the tax man' (such 1987
as in a recent Italian campaign), although the tax man failed to investigate the multi-billionaire whirlwind of 'unofficial' money transferred between the powerful and their cohorts of mafioso accomplices, contractors, paramours, facilitators and minions.
If the nanny state's dream of life as a perpetual weekend of affluence is failing, it is because the faceless crowd is not making its part, not because some inoffensive politician drank too much cappuccino, powdered his nose with cocaine, kept slush funds offshore, ate too much caviar, or was involved in minor transgressions.
The politician's baritonal voice leads the horde's choir in the celebration of yet another remembrance, fusion or atonement ritual: ”[The public] only wanted one thing from [a given public figure]: a story. He told it so well that we forgave him almost everything. ”;”We want -...- original content regardless of its validity. We're here for the scare, not for the plausibility”.
Appeals pile on to report -anonymously, of course- transgressors to this, that or another tax agency: a toll-free number for that purpose was set up in Italy long ago. Dura lex sed lex (however harsh, law shall prevail)? What about distressed left-wing hobos and parties pleading not to report illegal immigrants, lefty rioters, truants/absentees at the workplace2480 and other cherished categories?
2480
In quite a few cases when such complaints were brought to the justice system in Italy, the truant/absentee is almost invariably excused, more so if politics enters the picture.
1988
Are laws the vile procedure that keeps the crass elites and their unjust prejudices and privileges in place relying on self-serving casuistry, perchance? Behind the alleged transgressor's actions there surely is a secret cause so heartrending and convincing that reconciliation shall immediately follow: if only people listened to their hearts...the fabulous human soul and its volatile standards...
If this, that or another civil servant, lawmaker or tax man did turn a blind eye to -or took part in- the transgressions of the mighty few while chastising those of the many, it is time for absolute compassion, and the contemplation of the mountebank caught red-handed as s-he shivers in fear before the horde in fusion's judgment. His (crocodile) tears are salted like everybody else's, and his transgressions shall just remind us of our common humanity that is essentially flimsy and unaccountable, thus deserving of the great bear-hug of non-judgmental oneness: the (social) sacrament of reconciliation.
Portuguese poet António Gedeão delivered the poem “Lágrima de preta” (lit.:”teardrop of a black female”) in 19612481:
Encontrei uma preta que estava a chorar, pedi-lhe uma lágrima para a analisar. -...-Nem sinais de negro, nem vestígios de ódio. Água (quase tudo) (I met a female Black as she was crying, and asked her for a teardrop I might analyze -...-. No traces of either negroism, or hate: almost entirely water). Readers may see that “ teardrop of a [insert favorite here: Jew, homosexual, Rom, politician...]” would sort equally good results, and send readers into fitful 2481
Portugal would be embroiled in colonial wars until 1975.
1989
conniptions of oneness: they choke as gage of common humanity that tears epitomize.
On their part, transgressors turning tables on the angry crowd unleashing a hurricane of tears, and beautiful emotions, shall keep the act of contrition up, and pay lip service to “popular morality”, “free-floating folk beliefs”, “explanations or interpretations usually put forth”,”only an old Phoenician tale of what has often occurred before now in other places”, “prevailing cultural trends”, “the audience’s pre-established set of convictions”.
Professor of management Brown in turn2482 informs viewers that at work focusing on performance alone yields lesser dividends (promotions, pay increases...) than having one's superiors like one. Also, Brown 2483 emphasizes how opinion conformity (=being a yes-man) and ingratiation (=flattery) yield the best impression-management returns when not associated with immediate requests for rewards (=”you're truly great: now lend me some money”): the Dale Carnegie
Organization2484 concurs.
DeRue&Sytch also beg to agree2485:”If people like you, they will be disposed to give you their time and their efforts -...-so that they'll feel a natural
2013: A Model For Successful Influence. 2013: Practicing Impression Management. Vishton (2016:How Little Things Cause Big Persuasion) reiterates the concept. 2484 2005:disc 2. It helps to ponder how Dale Carnegie's strategies were about ten decades old when Vishton, Brown and others wrote about it. 2485 2015:unit 3. 2482 2483
1990
familiarity and comfort around you.”2486;”we are better disposed toward people who give us compliments -...-, and that we like those people even when we know that the compliments are insincere”2487;”Studies show that people typically like others who ingratiate themselves, and tend to evaluate their performance higher” 2488.
It’s not only less strenuous cognitively, it’s also more flattering and comforting to accept certain statements at face value. With regard to false compliments, we all want to believe the best about ourselves. Hence, we tend to be unsuspicious of those who seem to believe it, too. This seems like an obvious point: when a lie flatters us, we don’t spend much time trying to determine whether it’s true. But like the truth bias, our tendency to believe lies that make us feel good may operate more powerfully than we might expect. (Feldman 2009:27). Professor of Business Freeman2489 lists an alternative way to seek a job, which - he hastens to add- constitutes no subterfuge:
With this approach, job seekers have a series of conversations in which they ask people for information, not a job. This is an indirect, counterintuitive approach that allows the job seeker to learn from his or her interviewees. Surprisingly, the information interviewing process can open doors that often remain hidden in conventional job searches. (Freeman 2014:155). Frame flattery as advice-seeking (Curzan 2013:How To Negotiate Professional Relationships). When someone tries to politely tell people what they are doing wrong and phrases the criticism as a question (even one as seemingly innocuous as, “What made you think that solution would work?”), subconscious alarm bells ring. People can detect the difference between authentic inquiry and an effort to persuade them. (Rock&Schwartz 2006:no page). 2486
Boothman 2000:6,23. Ariely 2015:64, emphasis added. 2488 Curzan 2013:How To Negotiate Professional Relationship. 2489 2014:Negotiating Work And The Workplace. 2487
1991
Brown also advises medical professional to engage in acts of contrition to avoid malpractice lawsuits: emotions are strategies, indeed. Freeman confirms:
Most attorneys would never advise their clients to offer an apology, but curiously, a number of studies have found that when hospitals and doctors do so and take action to ensure that a mistake doesn’t happen again to others, plaintiffs tend to settle for much less money. (Freeman 2014:129). In multiple experiments, we found that saying sorry works rather well—even when people don’t mean it. Most interestingly, an apology works well even if the person from whom you are asking for forgiveness knows that you don’t really mean it. The point is that when someone says he or she was wrong and asks forgiveness, it’s hard to continue being mad at them. (Ariely 2015:45). The disclosure of fallibility humanizes doctors and builds trust, Friedman concluded. "In the end, most patients will forgive their doctor for an error of the head, but rarely for one of the heart (Tavris&Aronson 2007:220). Freeman2490 also advises negotiating parties that “to craft an effective appeal to common interest, make sure [to be] -...- specific, compelling and not selfserving”. The servile, slimy subordinate and the turncoat join the consummate actor: anxieties arise regarding their sincerity and authenticity. These perfunctory rituals work in spite of possible lack of authenticity just as “stories” work irrespective of whether they're forensically true or false.
( Not so) occasionally, though, transgressors forget to be 'on air' (or 'online') and drop the act by pillorying the impotent, faceless masses: they flaunt the presumed moral superiority that is often associated with the have-nots. As reported 2490
2014:Credibility And Rapport.
1992
and filmed by many press agencies, prominent Italian Catholic politician Formigoni (on November 12, 2011) flaunts the indignados heckling him (and other eminent law-makers ) by openly directing two obscene gestures at the crowd that was being kept well at bay by the impressive security apparatus anyways. At Mandela's funeral, Obama is immortalized making merry while taking “selfies” 2491.
Although taped at public conferences in 2012 and 2013, some comments by U.S MIT Professor J. Gruber spark controversy in late 2014. Gruber, an architect behind the Obama healthcare reform, lampoons U.S voters' “stupidity” and “lack of understanding” because they “lack transparency” of how the healthcare bill works because they are “too stupid”.
Gruber also discloses the bill was written “in a tortured way” to elude public scrutiny, and salutes the fact that “politicians didn't listen to the public and did what was right -...- a profile in courage”2492. Once Gruber's videos go viral over the internet, some of them 'accidentally' disappear from institutional repositories: mainstream media pay the entire affair scant to no attention.
Formigoni, Gruber and Obama short-circuit the deference-demeanor routine, whereby people exhibiting a certain demeanor attract deference, or the other way round, whereby deference prompts a certain demeanor in the recipient: French Queen Marie Antoinette bows to the jeering crowd at Versailles in 1789. Pope Francis I also appears kneeling in prayer as he exhorts people to pray for him 2491 2492
FoxNews December 11, 2013. Obamacare...2014:no page.
1993
in his INSTAGRAM debut on March 19, 2016. As the 'great man' engages in a thundering symbolic act, all the pedophile, racketeering and judicially convicted Catholic priests in this world disappear as the common man elatedly claps away as she anticipates the end of days or that sort of thing.
Furthermore, Formigoni's obscene gestures ultimately disrupt the deference-demeanor cycle, but also makes reconciliation virtually impossible, thus wounding the sweet human soul more than any polite refusal -or engaged critiquemight ever do:
So to break out of the loop means first and foremost stopping that relationship-not modifying it or changing its emotional tone but actually stopping it. Disengaging separates you from the other and, more important, from the experience of being in relationship. (Brown 1998:264). Of course, Marie Antoinette's life was possibly in danger as a mob had invaded the palace demanding bread, whereas Formigoni was leaving in his princely convoy under heavy escort.
In 50 CE, â&#x20AC;&#x153;on the fourth day of the [Passover] festival, a certain [Roman] soldier displayed his uncovered genitals to the multitude. This action put those that saw him into a furious rage, and made them cry out that it was not an insult to them, but an impiety against God.
â&#x20AC;?2493. The act spurred a revolt, which was
violently quashed. In-fighting between Jewish factions, Romans and gentiles ensued. Finally, the Emperor Claudius settled the issue by ordering the execution of 2493
Roman Soldier... no date:no page.
1994
the
Samaritan
delegates,
and
governor
Cumanus'
exile:
the
thorns
of
deference&demeanor.
The falling apart of welfare, providence and nanny regimes -assuming a difference exists- increasingly looks like the tragicomic antics of low-cost travel companies intermittently exposed as fraudulent, rather than the imperious actualization on the earthly plane of the 'right gods' of superlative progress the social alchemist ventriloquizes: it's -all things considered- a trivial discovery in the perspective of 'good' regimes versus 'bad'.
The quirky masses can be easily frogmarched into not only acquiescing to, but clamoring for, clampdown and police state when their intimate nature is provoked with more or less remotely controlled crises:”Most of our responses to the world, whether in the form of cooperation or competition, are of the kneejerk variety—working at an emotional, subconscious level” 2494.
Posthumous trials of deceased tyrants may offer a suitable diversion that never ceases to pay dividends:
un tema ben scelto, considerando che negli anni recenti si sono celebrati in Italia processi postumi a Napoleone, inscenati a volte con il concorso di magistrati per condannare Napoleone per i crimini commessi -...- Evidentemente la percezione del passato come un insieme di eventi che esigono una rielaborazione emotiva perché segnata da profondi legami con la nostra esistenza personale -...superando la discontinuità temporale tra il passato e il presente di chi scrive e di chi legge -...- [per] venire incontro al bisogno manifesto 2494
Chen&Krakovsky 2010:46.
1995
nella cultura recente mondiale di cercare un contatto emotivo con il passato -...-. Il luogo della memoria o la traccia documentaria lasciata da un evento diventano quindi lo strumento di un processo di appropriazione del passato che ha caratteristiche fortemente individuali, emotive e legate alla situazione concreta. Attraverso il riconoscimento di questo legame tra il presente e il passato si può cogliere il nucleo dellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;esperienza storica, vale a dire il bisogno di esperire la presenza del passato nel presente2495. (Tortarolo 2007:1-5). It is the recurring theological, apocalyptic 'fall'. The masses (or some mythical progenitor serving as ersatz) ate the forbidden apple, built the tower of Babel, didn't pay taxes, or otherwise spoilt the paradise dream deities had prepared for them, and are thus inescapably and fully guilty.
Such remote explanations are necessary so that people can keep pretenses of good faith up while their faith is in reality bad. City politicians blame their ineptitude, nepotism, mafioso practices and corruption on provincial politicians who -in turn- criminate regional politician who -in sequence- inculpate national politician who -in turn- blame European Union politicians who...
At every level a parallel operetta ensues: the mayor blames to city council that -in turn- blames internal consultants who -divine irony- blame an external consultant. Everybody either is the sweet parent of three precious children; plays the saxophone divinely; was raped as a child; or one is mentally ill: myths
2495
A well-chosen subject given that in recent years in Italy Napoleon has been put on posthumous trials for his crimes, at times at the hands of magistrates. It is evident that the past is seen as a sum of events that demand our emotional processing because they play directly into our personal lives, thus going past the temporal issue in order to cater to the need -present in cultures the world over- to seek emotive contact with the past. Places of menory or documentary evidence events left behind become tools of individual appropriation of the past on the basis of concrete situations. Throughout this recognition of links existing between present and past we can seize the core of historical experience, or the need to make the experience of the past into the present.
1996
forewarned about the danger rash judgments pose, after all.
Would we not sulk or gasp if one of them had a gastrointestinal or neurological syndrome as a result of our hasty judgment? What if one wonderful daddy of three self-destructed in agony over being accused unjustly just like [insert favorite mythical hero here]? How would we explain it to the little treasures who are so cute and innocent? “It is not that these stories are unimportant, not very sad, or unuseful, but they don’t help us understand what is happening all around us”.
The conscious decision to show vulnerability was a critical turning point in Bill Clinton’s career. Just five months before the 1992 presidential election, Clinton’s poll ratings were dismal, lagging well behind both George H. W. Bush and Ross Perot. -...-Clinton’s team launched an all-out vulnerability campaign -...-booking him on talk shows to reveal his troubled childhood and difficult family situations. Despite the Bush team calling this move “weird” and even downright “wacky,” the Clinton team persevered, and within just one month his approval ratings soared from 33 to 77 percent. The rest, of course, is history. (Cabane 2012:143). Besides, the same item -such as men having to earn a living through hard toil in an hostile environment- is presented both as divine retribution for sin (“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, ”
Genesis 3:19); or in a positive way (“the son of a good family has wealth earned through his efforts & enterprise, amassed through the strength of his arm, and piled up through the sweat of his brow, righteous wealth righteously gained. -...-he experiences bliss, he experiences joy. This is called the happiness of ownership.” Buddha, Anana Sutta).
1997
It shall be noted how Hinayana Buddhism -which was being created in the same broad historical period the Hebrew Bible was either written or consolidated2496- does not present the Mesopotamian-Egyptian-Hebrew obsession with irascible, omnipotent heavenly patriarchs as measure of all things, although Buddhism does preach to Kings of Kings and monarchs regarding their conduct. Later Mahayana, however, turns the Buddha into an almighty, divine patriarch – of the compassionate variety- endowed with superhuman powers who -in the Lotus
Sutra- can claim:”all sentient beings are my children” (= artificial kin motif). Earlier still, Theravada monastic discipline detailed that monks “lose their former names and lineage and are reckoned simply as recluses, sons of the Sakya.”.
It is the same theory the German High Command propounded after WWI; Germany was this close to winning, yet the backstabbing at the hands of traitors2497 and anti-nationals2498 had delivered the fatal blow to the collective war effort. It is not without irony how Fascist honchos in Italy and Germany -as the WWII catastrophe they had once celebrated approached its final stages- reproached the Italian and the German people of having failed the best of all regimes by not living up to the millenarian standards predicated of them.
What social alchemists, welfare mongers, prophets, saviors and other 2496
Some put the consolidation of the Hebrew Bible as we know it in a period going from the Babylonian conquest (VI century BCE) -which witnessed the end of the divided Hebrew kingdoms of Judea in the South, and Israel in the North- to the V to II century BCE: the return to Palestine, and later Hellenistic influence (323-30 BCE). Others see the Hebrew Bible coming together in a definitive form only with the Masoretic tradition and the Aleppo Codex (X century CE). 2497 Group or individual engaging in proactive behaviour in order to actively interfere with the group's goals. 2498 Group or individual not going as far as traitors go, yet passively disaffected and/or unwilling to pursue the group's goals.
1998
messengers of higher good propound is flawless (the best of all causes, etc), no matter what the final bill ends up amounting to. The German High Command after WWI rewrote the logistic history of the last years of war to substantiate its (preposterous) claims; contemporary governments conjure up sky-high figures (= the motif of the surfeit that boggles one's mind) of tax evasion that not only are merely hypothetical, but blown out of proportion to dwarf other possible explanations for the recurring crises.
People have to be one with the entranced pack meekly acquiescing to whatever demands are placed upon them waiting for the moment this, that or another eerie utopian scheme culled from long-dead hacks shall become fact:â&#x20AC;?three years of struggle, followed by a thousand years of happinessâ&#x20AC;? was Mao's motto.
Isn't any concession and any demand insignificant when compared with 'the best of all causes' in possible danger, or 'the great ideas' that shall 'become fact' soon? Brazilian caudillo Getulio Vargas, although initially propelled by a composite cohort of liberals and insurrectionists, established from 1930 a dictatorship modeled upon European Fascism. In order to divide and thus conquer opponents, Vargas initially styled his regime as a provisional government.
Problems can be simply explained away as the misdeeds of the occasional rotten apple(s), for criticizing the ventriloquists for the higher good implies criticizing the taboo or totem:
1999
Only one ruler in the world says: Argue as much as you like and about whatever you like, but obey! -...- In this respect our age is the age of enlightenment, the century of Frederick (Kant 1784-2:no page). France was long a 'Despotism tempered by Epigrams;' and now, it would seem, the Epigrams have get the upper hand. -...- When it suddenly appears that old Foulon is alive; nay, that he is here, in early morning, in the streets of Paris; the extortioner, the plotter, who would make the people eat grass, and was a liar from the beginning!− −It is even so. The deceptive 'sumptuous funeral' (of some domestic that died); the hiding−place at Vitry towards Fontainbleau, have not availed that wretched old man. Some living domestic or dependant, for none loves Foulon, has betrayed him to the Village. Merciless boors of Vitry unearth him; pounce on him, like hell−hounds: Westward, old Infamy; to Paris, to be judged at the Hotel−de−Ville! His old head, which seventy−four years have bleached, is bare; they have tied an emblematic bundle of grass on his back; a garland of nettles and thistles is round his neck: in this manner; led with ropes; goaded on with curses and menaces, must he, with his old limbs, sprawl forward; the pitiablest, most unpitied of all old men. -...Electoral rhetoric, eloquence of Mayor Bailly, is wasted explaining the beauty of the Law's delay. Delay, and still delay! Behold, O Mayor of the People, the morning has worn itself into noon; and he is still unjudged!−−Lafayette, pressingly sent for, arrives; gives voice: This Foulon, a known man, is guilty almost beyond doubt; but may he not have accomplices? Ought not the truth to be cunningly pumped out of him,−−in the Abbaye Prison? It is a new light! Sansculottism claps hands;−−at which hand−clapping, Foulon (in his fainness, as his Destiny would have it) also claps. "See! they understand one another!" cries dark Sansculottism, blazing into fury of suspicion.−−"Friends," said 'a person in good clothes,' stepping forward, "what is the use of judging this man? Has he not been judged these thirty years?" With wild yells, Sansculottism clutches him, in its hundred hands: he is whirled across the Place de Greve, to the 'Lanterne,' Lamp−iron which there is at the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie; pleading bitterly for life,−−to the deaf winds. Only with the third rope (for two ropes broke, and the quavering voice still pleaded), can he be so much as got hanged! His Body is dragged through the streets; his Head goes aloft on a pike, the mouth filled with grass: amid sounds as of Tophet, from a grass−eating people.(Carlyle 1837:no page). In February 1949 Ecuador, an angry mob stormed Radio Quito station. The building was set on fire, and six radio employees died. The retaliatory attack 2000